DEC  3  1919 


# 


BR  121  .H642  1919 
Hough,  Lynn  Harold,  1877 
The  productive  beliefs 


The  Productive  Beliefs 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

The  Productive  Beliefs  -     -     -     - 

(  '9'9  ) 

By  Lynn  H.  Hough,  D.D. 

Old  Truths  and  New  Facts     -     - 

(  IV*  ) 

By  Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.D. 

The  North  American  Idea  -     -    - 

(  '9*7  ) 

By  James  A.  Macdonald,  LL.  D. 

The    Foundation    of    Modern 

Religion 

(  '9*6 ) 

By  Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.  D. 

Winning  the  World  for  Christ   - 

(  *9'5 ) 

By  Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth. 

Personal  Christianity     -     -    -     - 

C  '9H  ) 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell. 

The  God  We  Trust 

(  '913  ) 

By  G.  A.  Johnston  Ross. 

What  Does  Christianity  Mean  ?  - 

( *9*2 ) 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce. 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the 

World  Movement 

(  '9" ) 

By  Robert  E.  Speer. 

In  the  School  of  Christ  -     -     - 

(  Wo  ) 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell. 

Jesus  the  Worker 

(W) 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.  D. 

The  Fact  of  Conversion     -     -    - 

{'90S) 

By  George  Jackson,  B.  A. 

God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul 

( '907 ) 

By  John  Watson  (Ian  Maclaren). 

Christ  and  Science 

( 190b ) 

By  Francis  Henry  Smith. 

The   Universal   Elements  of  the 

Christian  Religion 

(  '90S  ) 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall. 

The  Religion  of  the  Incarnation  - 

(  '90S  ) 

By  Bishop  Eugene  Russell  Hendrix. 

The    Cole  Lectures  for  igrg 

dtli-vered  before  Vanderbilt  Uni-vertity 

The  Productive 
Beliefs 


By 
LYNN  HAROLD  HOUGH,  D.D. 

President  Northwestern  University 


The  Abingdon  Press 

New  York  Cincinnati 


Copyright,  19 19,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


Contents 

I.  The  Adventurous  God  ....        7 

II.  The  Invading  of  Evil  ....      43 

III.  The  Imperial  Personality     ...      79 

IV.  The  Vital  Meaning  of  the  Cross         .     1 17 

V.  The  Infinite  Nearness  of  God      .        .153 

VI.  The  Social  Life  of  God        .        .        .189 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE  late  Colonel  E.  W.  Cole  of  Nashville,  Ten. 
nessee,  donated  to  Vanderbilt  University  the  sum 
of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards  increased  by 
Mrs.  E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand,  the  design  and  con- 
ditions of  which  gift  are  stated  as  follows  : 

"  The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a  foundation 
for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connection  with  the  Bib- 
lical Department  of  the  University,  to  be  restricted  in  its 
scope  to  a  defense  and  advocacy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. The  lectures  shall  be  delivered  at  such  inter- 
vals, from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the 
Board  of  Trust ;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer 
shall  be  determined  by  nomination  of  the  Theological 
Faculty  and  confirmation  of  the  College  of  Bishops  of 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South.  Said  lecture 
shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full,  and  the  man- 
uscript of  the  same  shall  be  the  property  of  the  Univer- 
sity, to  be  published  or  disposed  of  by  the  Board  of  Trust 
at  its  discretion,  the  net  proceeds  arising  therefrom  to  be 
added  to  the  foundation  fund,  or  otherwise  used  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Biblical  Department." 


LECTURE  I 
THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD 


LECTURE  I 

THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD 

IN  the  year  378  a.  d.  the  world  trembled.  In  that 
year  the  battle  of  Adrianople  was  fought.  In 
that  year  the  Emperor  Valens  was  defeated 
and  killed.  For  the  first  time  Roman  soldiers  were 
defeated  by  Barbarian  warriors  within  the  bounds 
of  the  Empire.  Men  began  to  look  at  each  other  with 
strange  eyes  and  to  wonder  what  the  future  of  the 
world  would  be.  In  the  year  410  a.  d.  the  world 
reeled  as  from  a  terrible  blow.  In  that  year  Alaric 
and  his  West  Goths  sacked  the  city  of  Rome.  The 
event  staggered  the  imagination  of  men.  It  was  as 
if  the  sun  had  suddenly  begun  to  dance  wildly  about 
the  sky.  Rome  the  stable,  Rome  the  dependable, 
Rome  the  eternal  had  bent  before  the  onslaught  of 
its  foes.  Life  itself  seemed  beginning  to  fall  apart. 
The  very  structure  of  civilization  seemed  about  to 
disintegrate.  With  strange  palpitations  of  the 
heart  and  with  eyes  full  of  fear  and  anxiety  men 
whispered  together  about  the  bewildering  days  which 
had  come  upon  them  and  the  more  bewildering  days 
which  lay  ahead.  In  the  midst  of  it  all,  while  men's 
minds  were  dizzy  and  their  hearts  were  faint,  a  man 
in  North  Africa  caught  a  vision  of  the  permanent  in 
the  midst  of  the  fleeting,  a  vision  of  the  stable  and 

9 


IO  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

secure  in  the  midst  of  the  disintegrating  and  the 
decaying.  Saint  Augustine,  Bishop  of  Hippo,  wit- 
nessing the  day  of  the  humiliation  of  Home,  the 
great  City  of  Man,  wrote  his  powerful  and  inspiring 
book,  "The  City  of  God."  In  the  midst  of  the  falling 
timbers  of  the  Roman  Civilization  he  found  safety 
and  hope  in  that  vast  and  imperial  structure,  the 
civilization  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  His  book  was  a 
great  adventure  of  faith.  But  there  was  a  solid 
force  about  it  which  mastered  men's  minds.  For 
many  a  century  it  wielded  an  influence  of  the  utmost 
potency.  And  in  the  day  of  doubt  and  fear  when 
it  was  written  it  was  like  a  shelter  in  a  destructive 
storm. 

The  thing  which  Augustine  did  for  the  fifth  cen- 
tury must  be  done  for  every  century.  The  sense  of 
the  eternal  verities  which  are  pressing  their  way 
into  the  heart  of  contemporary  civilization  must  be 
made  dominating  and  commanding  by  an  interpre- 
tation rich  in  vitality  and  cutting  in  intellectual 
penetration  and  luminous  with  moral  and  spiritual 
power.  If  this  is  the  need  of  every  age  it  is  the 
crying  need  of  those  generations  which  like  that  of 
Augustine  see  the  shaking  of  the  very  foundations 
of  the  world  and  the  inrush  of  the  currents  of  a  new 
day.  The  bursting  of  shells  along  the  Marne  in 
1914  and  the  bridging  of  the  Atlantic  with  sturdy 
boys  in  1918  are  elements  in  a  struggle  which  has 
changed  the  world  for  all  of  us.  You  can  move  your 
body  more  quickly  than  you  can  move  your  mind, 
and  some  of  the  boys  who  after  seeing  terrible  fight- 
ing in  France  have  returned  to  America,  awake  in 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  II 

the  morning  knowing  that  they  have  not  even  yet 
been  able  to  bring  their  minds  back  from  the  bitter 
and  intolerable  scenes  of  the  battle  front.  Many 
men  under  the  stress  of  the  hardest  hour,  in  the 
shock  of  the  very  moment  of  supreme  demand, 
found  themselves  and  life's  meaning  in  a  swift  flash 
of  intuition,  and  they  are  now  wistfully  wondering 
if  the  days  of  peace  can  authenticate  and  make  real 
and  permanent  in  their  lives  the  meaning  of  that 
flaming  insight. 

America,  which  Columbus  had  discovered  in  1492, 
discovered  itself  in  1918,  and  this  hundred  million 
human  organism  of  passionate  devotion  to  a  great 
cause,  pouring  out  its  treasure  and  sending  out  its 
sons,  is  fairly  trembling  now  with  the  shock  of  re- 
action which  has  come  with  the  arrival  of  peace. 
Much  disillusionment  has  come  with  peace.  Many 
ugly  and  unlovely  facts  have  been  forced  upon  our 
unwilling  eyes.  Is  there  a  fashion  in  which  the 
deepest  passion  of  the  hour  of  high  enthusiasm  can 
be  saved  in  the  midst  of  the  confusions  of  a  world- 
wide reaction  ?  Can  all  the  impalpable  and  invisible 
glory  of  purpose,  which  responded  to  the  demand 
for  the  mobilization  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
resources  of  the  nation,  be  held  steady  and  conserved 
and  made  part  of  the  permanent  possession  of  the 
country?  There  were  groups  of  men  who  lived 
through  the  crisis  with  troubled  and  unsympathetic 
minds.  They  tried  to  fit  into  the  situation  in  some 
practical  fashion,  but  their  whole  theory  of  life, 
their  whole  sense  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  fitness  of 
things  was  so  deeply  shocked  that  they  moved  about 


12  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

as  those  in  a  horrible  dream.  They  could  not  shout 
when  others  shouted  and  their  whole  inner  life 
seemed  out  of  tune  in  the  presence  of  the  world-wide 
enthusiasm.  Is  there  a  fashion  in  which  the  undoubted 
human  idealism  of  this  group  can  be  fitted  into  the 
glow  of  a  new  vision  of  the  new  day,  so  that  they 
shall  come  out  of  their  tragic  and  pitiful  loneliness 
and  once  more  feel  the  currents  of  contemporary  life 
flowing  warmly  through  their  veins?  There  were 
groups  of  people  in  various  countries  so  busy  think- 
ing about  the  wrongs  and  the  needs  of  particular 
classes  that  their  eyes  could  not  be  adjusted  to  the 
world  crisis.  With  yearning  and  trembling  and 
eager  fingers  they  are  trying  to  rescue  from  the  con- 
tentions of  the  present  days  a  new  hope  for  those  to 
whom  life  has  given  least  hope  in  the  long  years  of 
the  past. 

Is  there  a  fashion  in  which  the  meaning  of  their 
passion  and  of  all  the  noblest  contemporary  enthu- 
siasms can  be  united  and  made  part  of  a  program  in 
which  we  can  all  join  in  determined  conviction  as  we 
go  at  the  task  of  remaking  the  world?  "Wild  forces 
of  lawlessness  have  been  released.  The  lurid  light  of 
the  conflagration  of  civilization  itself  shines  upon  us 
across  the  distances  and  over  the  seas.  There  are 
lawless  forces  in  our  own  land  which  would  spell  lib- 
erty in  deeds  affronting  every  moral  standard,  and 
would  interpret  freedom  as  license  to  ravish  every 
fair  innocence  in  the  world.  And  there  are  men  who 
fearful  at  the  thought  of  impending  crisis  have  lost 
steadiness  and  poise  and  are  spending  their  days  and 
nights  in  fear  of  potential  catastrophe.    Is  there  a 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  13 

fashion  in  which  so  clear  and  noble  a  view  of  the  real 
meaning  of  political  and  economic  and  industrial 
freedom  can  be  set  forth  and  realized  that  all  thei 
forces  of  good  will  can  be  united  in  a  strong  and 
lucid  program,  the  men  of  trembling  hesitation  may' 
be  reassured,  and  the  forces  of  lawlessness  may  be 
held  in  check?  In  the  clutter  and  confusion  of  our 
thinking  about  social  problems  and  social  relation- 
ships we  have  half  forgotten  the  hungry  cry  of  the 
inner  life  of  every  individual  man  for  interpretation 
and  satisfaction.  But  the  cry  persists.  And  multi- 
tudes of  restless  hearts  and  lives  are  waiting  for  the 
interpreting  and  guiding  word. 

Is  there  a  fashion  in  which  an  enlarged  and  resil- 
ient Christianity  can  speak  with  telling  authenticity 
in  answer  to  the  inarticulate  outreach  of  all  this 
need  f  The  nations  are  confronted  by  the  problem  of 
finding  a  way  to  work  out  a  real  and  unified  life  for 
the  whole  family  of  peoples  in  the  world.  Is  there  a 
fashion  in  which  the  world's  idealism  can  be  har- 
nessed effectively  and  successfully  for  the  doing  of 
this  tragically  needed  piece  of  work?  And  moving 
through  this  confusing  mass  of  problems  and  articu- 
late and  inarticulate  needs  dare  we  say  that  a  Chris- 
tianity eternally  young  and  nobly  adequate  can  utter 
the  guiding  and  masterful  and  victorious  word  ?  Is 
it  possible  in  any  sense  to  do  for  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury what  Saint  Augustine  did  for  the  fifth?  Is  it 
possible  to  write  a  City  of  God  for  our  time  ? 

At  once  it  must  be  said  very  definitely  and  deci- 
sively, that  this  series  of  lectures  does  not  contemplate 
so  ambitious  a  task.     This  Gothic  cathedral  of  the 


14  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

mind  in  which  the  men  of  our  time  may  worship  must 
be  built.  But  that  high  task  is  not  the  one  upon 
which  we  are  entering.  There  is,  however,  within  the 
reach  of  the  possibilities  of  the  present  discussion  the 
simpler  but  very  important  work  of  taking  a  survey 
of  the  material  which  lies  at  our  hands  and  of  gaining 
some  conception  even  if  in  shadowy  outline  of  the 
fashion  in  which  it  must  be  used  by  the  builders  who 
bring  adequate  minds  and  hands  to  the  supreme  task. 
The  delightfully  friendly,  and  yet  urgently  serious, 
discussion  carried  on  by  Professor  Royce  and  Pro- 
fessor James  as  to  the  meaning  and  the  range  of  the 
pragmatic  principle  may  well  be  in  our  minds  as  we 
approach  the  work  before  us.  Has  the  pragmatic 
method  given  us  an  approach  to  reality  and  a  method 
of  testing  it  or  is  our  whole  conception  of  what  is  real 
modified  by  the  pragmatic  philosophy  until  we  must 
say  that  we  are  using  words  without  meaning  if  we 
insist  that  there  is  any  reality  beyond  serviceable- 
ness?  When  the  question  is  put  in  this  form  it  will 
not  require  a  long  process  of  dialectic  to  lead  most  of 
us  to  the  place  where  we  are  willing  to  declare  that 
as  far  as  we  are  concerned  the  pragmatic  method  is 
of  the  utmost  importance  as  long  as  it  is  just  a 
method,  but  it  becomes  a  vain  pretense  when  it  as- 
sumes to  be  a  metaphysic.  We  are  willing  to  admit 
that  there  must  be  some  sort  of  reality  back  of  a  con- 
ception which  year  after  year  and  century  after  cen- 
tury helps  people  to  get  on  with  life.  But  we  are  not 
at  all  willing  to  admit  that  the  only  reality  it  has  is 
just  this  power  to  help  people  to  meet  life.  It  helps 
them  because  they  believe  that  it  stands  for  some- 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  1 5 

thing  objective.  And  if  it  has  no  objective  relation 
its  capacity  to  be  helpful  is  based  upon  an  illusion. 
The  real  and  valid  meaning  of  pragmatism  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  statement  that  it  perpetually 
brings  before  us  the  fact  that  it  is  the  business  of 
philosophy  to  gather  together  and  classify  those  con- 
ceptions which  have  proved  themselves  by  their  ca- 
pacity to  function  in  the  field  of  experience,  rather 
than  to  spin  spider  webs  of  formal  logic  and  to  clas- 
sify those  conceptions  which  a  mathematical  analysis 
would  suggest  ought  to  function  in  actual  life.  If  a 
man  to  whom  pragmatism  is  a  metaphysic  as  well  as 
a  philosophy  objects  that  this  is  not  pragmatism,  we 
must  be  content  to  reply  if  this  is  removed  from  prag- 
matism there  is  nothing  left  which  is  sound  or  true. 

To  put  all  this  a  little  less  formally  there  are  two 
ways  to  approach  the  task  of  interpreting  life.  One 
is  to  treat  the  whole  experience  of  life  as  a  series  of 
experiments  in  a  vast  laboratory,  and  then  to  collect 
the  results  of  these  experiments,  to  classify  them  and 
to  hold  fast  to  those  views  of  life  and  destiny  which 
have  power  to  answer  to  the  outreach  of  human  na- 
ture, to  discipline  its  energies  and  to  release  its  po- 
tencies. The  other  is  to  make  the  whole  matter  an 
exercise  of  formal  thought  and  of  mathematical 
proof.  In  the  former  case  our  thinking  will  keep  in 
the  closest  touch  with  life.  In  the  latter  case  it  will 
involve  a  wonderfully  intricate  and  involved  piece  of 
reasoning,  but  it  will  have  a  strange  aloofness  from 
all  the  gripping  and  vital  aspects  of  human  experi- 
ence. The  act  of  faith  which  dares  to  assume  that 
those  conceptions  which  vindicate  themselves  by  their 


l6  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

perpetual  capacity  to  function  effectively  have  a  deep 
connection  with  the  reality  of  things,  is  an  exact  par- 
allel to  the  act  of  faith  of  the  scientist  who  assumes 
that  he  can  depend  upon  the  unity,  the  uniformity 
and  the  dependable  activity  of  that  vast  network  of 
manifold  relationships  which  we  call  nature. 

The  principle  we  are  discussing  was  frankly  made 
decisive  for  theological  thinking  in  the  most  brilliant 
work  of  Albrect  Ritschl.  His  value  judgments  put 
the  pragmatic  principle  into  theological  language. 
The  emergence  of  the  principle  is  at  least  as  early  as 
the  words  of  Jesus, ' '  If  a  man  willeth  to  do  ...  he 
shall  know. ' '  What  a  conception  means  to  you  when 
you  put  it  in  action  is  frankly  recognized  in  these 
words  to  be  of  more  importance  than  what  it  means 
simply  as  a  result  of  cool  and  critical  formal  analysis. 

The  method  which  it  is  necessary  to  use  in  coming 
into  some  fresh  and  mastering  contact  with  the  reali- 
ties of  life  and  religion  is  then  clearly  before  us.  We 
must  go  to  life  itself.  We  must  go  to  its  deepest  ex- 
periences. We  must  follow  its  hours  of  defeat.  We 
must  behold  its  hours  of  victory.  And  right  in  this 
wonderfully  varied  and  moving  contact  with  life  we  n 
must  find  those  facts,  those  principles,  and  those  con- 
ceptions which  have  it  in  them  to  be  the  driving  force 
of  the  best  life  of  the  world.  We  must  go  to  the  life 
of  our  own  day.  We  must  listen  to  the  tale  of  all  its 
confusion.  We  must  listen  to  the  tale  of  all  its  woe. 
We  must  listen  to  the  tale  of  its  blighting  and  devas- 
tating evil.  We  must  feel  the  very  pulse  beat  of  its 
hope  and  fear,  of  its  joy  and  its  sorrow,  its  aspira- 
tion and  its  despair,  the  very  taste  of  its  satisfaction, 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  1 7 

its  yearning,  its  remorse  and  its  peace.  And  in  the 
terms  of  this  sharply  concrete  and  vividly  actual  con- 
tact with  life  we  must  do  our  thinking.  We  must 
seek  those  beliefs  which  have  the  potency  of  being 
productive  in  just  this  world,  of  just  these  problems 
and  of  just  these  relationships.  By  productive  be- 
liefs we  mean  those  beliefs  which  are  necessary  to  the 
full  and  adequate  functioning  of  the  individual  man 
and  of  society.  With  the  laboratory  test  in  our 
minds  we  are  to  go  forth  on  the  quest  for  these 
beliefs. 

The  method  which  we  are  to  follow  involves  in  its 
very  nature  an  answer  to  the  most  significant  ques- 
tions which  we  can  ask  regarding  authority  and  espe- 
cially regarding  religious  authority.  Men  have  at- 
tempted to  find  a  formal  and  mechanical  author- 
ity outside  themselves.  They  have  attempted  to 
build  upon  an  infallible  church.  They  have  at- 
tempted to  build  upon  an  infallible  book.  And 
the  external  infallible  authorities  have  proved 
astonishingly  inadequate.  Out  of  all  these  experi- 
ences the  truth  has  gradually  emerged  that  the  au- 
thoritative must  come  right  up  out  of  life,  the  master- 
ing must  speak  from  within  human  experience,  the 
transcendent  must  become  the  immanent  in  order  to 
compel  the  mind  and  conscience,  and  to  become  reg- 
nant over  the  whole  personality  of  man.  Long  ago 
Coleridge  put  the  principle  sufficiently  well  when  he 
said, ' '  The  Bible  finds  me. ' '  The  spark  kindled  in  his 
own  life  by  contact  with  the  Bible  was  just  the  thing 
which  made  the  Bible  mastering  to  him.  The  objec- 
tive Bible  is  impotent.     The  subjective  man  is  just 


18  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

about  as  impotent.  It  is  exactly  when  the  Bible  by 
means  of  its  flaming  conceptions  begins  to  burn  in 
the  mind  and  the  heart  of  a  man  and  to  function  in 
his  deeds  that  we  can  actually  approach  the  question 
of  the  power  of  the  Bible  in  a  fashion  which  is  deal- 
ing not  with  vain  words  but  with  living  experiences. 
It  is  because  the  Bible  is  in  this  sense  a  productive 
book  that  it  has  an  absolutely  unique  place  in  the  his- 
tory and  the  working  of  religion  in  the  world. 

Dr.  Robert  William  Dale  thought  his  way  through 
the  heart  of  the  problem  in  the  days  when  the  search- 
ing methods  of  modern  criticism  were  becoming  com- 
mon in  England.  He  laid  down  three  principles 
which  are  still  potent.  The  first  was  that  the  por- 
trait of  Christ  in  the  Gospels  is  self-authenticating. 
However  it  got  there  it  is  the  one  portrait  of  a  life 
supremely  gifted  with  the  power  of  ethical  and  spir- 
itual seizure,  with  the  capacity  to  hold  the  mind  and 
the  conscience  of  men.  The  second  assertion  of  Dr. 
Dale  was  that  when  a  man  surrenders  to  the  leader- 
ship and  the  command  of  the  Master  whom  the  Gos- 
pels portray  a  remarkable  thing  happens.  The  Christ 
of  history  becomes  the  Christ  of  experience.  He 
ceases  to  be  the  Christ  in  a  book  and  becomes  the 
Christ  in  our  lives.  Martin  Luther  once  said,  "If 
some  one  should  knock  at  the  door  of  my  heart  and 
say,  'Who  dwells  there?'  I  would  not  reply,  'Martin 
Luther  dwells  here,'  I  would  reply,  'Jesus  Christ 
dwells  here.'  "  The  surrender  to  the  Christ  in  the 
Gospels  means  the  discovery  of  the  Christ  in  experi- 
ence. The  third  principle  upon  which  Dr.  Dale 
insisted  was  the  fashion  in  which  the  knowledge  of 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  19 

men  is  capable  of  social  confirmation.  He  brilliantly 
illustrated  the  way  in  which  even  the  most  ordinary 
kind  of  knowledge  comes  to  complete  assurance 
through  social  confirmation.  And  applying  this 
principle  to  the  Christian  religion  he  brought 
forth  the  multitude  of  men  whom  no  man  can  num- 
ber, the  multitude  of  human  beings  living  and  dead 
who  have  found  their  personal  problems  solved  and 
their  lives  transformed  by  means  of  contact  with  the 
organizing  and  interpreting  and  sustaining  ener- 
gies which  come  forth  from  the  personality  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Later  on  in  this  series  of  lectures  it  will  be- 
come evident  that  we  wish  to  make  our  own  appeal  to 
the  functioning  power  of  the  great  Christian  facts 
and  truths.  Just  at  the  moment  what  we  wish  to 
do  is  to  call  attention  to  the  fashion  in  which  every 
one  of  Dr.  Dale's  principles  is  an  appeal  to  ex- 
perience. Sometimes  it  is  an  appeal  to  the  experi- 
ence of  the  individual.  Sometimes  it  is  an  appeal  to 
the  reinforcing  power  of  the  experience  of  the  group. 
But  all  the  while  it  is  clear  that  the  religion  which 
becomes  mastering  to  Dr.  Dale  is  a  religion  which 
can  prove  itself  upon  the  field  of  achievement.  What 
it  can  do  proves  the  quality  of  what  it  is.  The  book 
which  can  secure  a  unique  place  in  the  thought 
and  life  of  Dr.  Dale  must  meet  the  same  test.  You 
must  judge  it  by  what  comes  out  of  it.  By  its 
fruit  you  must  know  it.  The  supremely  productive 
book  is  the  supremely  mastering  book.  In  the  only 
sense  in  which  the  words  have  practical  meaning  the 
productive  is  the  authoritative.  In  the  struggles  of 
experience  religion  must  be  put  to  the  test.    It  is  a 


20  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

question  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  And  it  is  the 
vital  test  which  enables  us  to  know  what  religion  is 
fit  to  survive. 

It  is  possible  to  lift  at  this  point  a  very  searching 
question.  What  sort  of  beliefs  are  really  productive  ? 
Are  they  beliefs  which  have  to  do  with  a  method  of 
living  and  a  noble  program  of  human  relationships  ? 
Are  they  beliefs  about  the  nature  and  activity  of 
God,  the  nature  and  activity  of  man  and  an  ultimate 
goal  for  human  life?  Or  are  they  both  kinds  of  be- 
liefs joined  together  in  a  sort  of  passionate  organism 
of  conviction?  Is  religion  a  method  of  life?  Does 
it  include  a  view  of  the  universe  and  a  view  of  God  ? 
Is  it  an  experience  which  requires  the  ministry  of 
every  sort  of  truth?  Or  is  it  an  activity  based  upon 
a  dream  of  brotherhood  and  not  needing  to  ask  any 
very  widely  ranging  questions  about  the  nature  of 
man  and  the  nature  of  God  ? 

These  questions  have  never  been  more  actual  and 
real  than  they  are  to-day.  And  they  come  to  a  head 
in  the  most  penetrating  question  which  men  of  our 
time  are  asking,  namely,  can  you  retain  a  powerful 
and  adequate  religion  without  believing  in  a  personal 
God  ?  It  is  in  the  light  of  this  question,  which  is  the 
essential  question  in  the  mind  of  many  an  eager  and 
truth-seeking  student,  that  we  must  approach  our 
discussion  of  the  belief  regarding  God  which  is  pro- 
ductive and  which  is  capable  of  vindicating  itself  in 
the  strange  and  seething  life  of  our  time. 

It  is  only  fair  that  we  should  consider  the  psychol- 
ogy of  this  question  as  well  as  its  logic.  When  we 
understand  the  reason  why  a  question  is  lifted  it  is 


THE  ADVENTUROUS   GOD  21 

often  true  that  we  have  a  new  insight  into  the  nature 
of  the  question  itself. 

Francis  Bacon  in  one  of  his  brilliant  pieces  of 
criticism  of  the  inadequate  methods  of  men  who  deal 
in  the  matters  of  the  mind  and  its  relation  to  the 
facts  of  life,  complains  of  those  who  "like  spiders, 
spin  out  their  own  webs.''  One  recognizes  at  once 
the  type  of  mental  activity  which  is  full  of  motion 
and  energy  but  which  fails  to  achieve  any  actual  con- 
tact with  the  reality  of  things.  The  student  of  the- 
ology must  very  frankly  admit  that  there  has  been 
no  end  of  theological  activity  which  makes  just  this 
impression  upon  the  investigating  mind.  There  are 
plenty  of  alert  and  shrewd  distinctions,  there  is  the 
process  of  a  wonderfully  brilliant  dialectic,  there  is 
constant  evidence  of  genuine  mental  power.  But 
somehow  all  of  it  seems  apart  from  any  real  experi- 
ence of  life.  You  go  forth  on  long  and  perilous 
flights  of  speculation,  and  when  they  are  completed 
you  have  the  dizzy  sense  of  height  still  with  you,  but 
it  would  be  hard  to  tell  in  any  practical  and  concrete 
way  of  any  important  result  of  the  difficult  journey. 
Of  course  there  are  times  when  this  appearance  of 
complete  aloofness  from  life  is  the  result  of  our  in- 
adequate apprehension  of  the  nature  and  the  rela- 
tionships of  the  process  of  thought  which  we  so 
lightly  and  easily  condemned.  But  too  often  the 
difficulty  has  been  that  the  theological  thinker  him- 
self has  quite  gotten  away  from  any  real  issue,  con- 
tinuing, to  go  back  to  Bacon's  figure,  to  spin  out 
his  own  web.  There  has  been  so  much  of  this  barren 
thinking  and  it  has  been  accompanied  so  often  by  a 


22  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

hard  and  dogmatic  assertiveness  that  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  a  definite  and  sharp  reaction  has  made 
itself  felt.  There  have  been  men  who  made  thinking 
about  the  nature  of  God  a  substitute  for  facing  the 
practical  responsibility  of  doing  the  will  of  God. 
And  over  against  them  men  of  ethical  passion  have 
sometimes  insisted  that  the  important  matter  is  to  do 
the  will  of  a  righteous  deity  and  not  to  have  theories 
about  Him.  The  next  step  has  not  been  hard.  The 
type  of  man  has  arisen  who  has  declared  that  God  we 
do  not  know,  but  duty  we  do  understand.  And  it 
has  been  easy  to  come  to  the  place  where  religion  was 
interpreted  as  a  working  passion  for  human  brother- 
hood, with  no  particular  need  of  a  deity  as  more  than 
a  rhetorical  decoration.  So  emerges  the  very  prac- 
tical question:  Is  God  necessary  to  religion? 

The  answer  is  a  matter  of  the  most  strategic  signifi- 
cance. The  truth  is  that  all  the  insistence  that  Chris- 
tianity is  a  program  and  not  a  philosophy,  a  way  of 
doing  things  and  not  a  way  of  thinking  about  things 
is  based  upon  a  fundamental  fallacy.  This  is  the 
belief  that  after  you  have  discarded  the  Christian 
view  of  God  you  can  retain  the  Christian  code  of 
morals.  There  is  the  most  simple  and  naive  belief  in 
certain  quarters  that  there  is  something  self-protect- 
ing and  self-authenticating  about  the  Christian  pro- 
gram, so  that  you  can  keep  its  sanctions  clear  and  its 
behests  imperative  whatever  your  belief  or  lack  of 
belief  about  the  fundamental  matters  of  the  universe. 
Now  as  a  matter  of  personal  and  individual  psychol- 
ogy to  be  sure  it  is  often  true  that  a  particular  man 
keeps  his  Christian  ethics  after  he  has  lost  his  Chris- 


y 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  23 

tian  beliefs.  And  this  man  is  always  to  be  considered 
with  the  most  friendly  and  sympathetic  understand- 
ing. The  Church  must  recognize  the  difficulty  of  his 
problem  and  the  perplexities  involved  in  his  whole 
situation  and  it  must  treat  him  with  that  hearty  and 
tender  brotherliness  which  itself  will  be  an  element 
in  the  solution  of  his  problem. 

In  a  transitional  period  like  ours  there  are  sure  to 
be  multitudes  of  men  who  pass  through  this  experi- 
ence, and  the  Christian  leader  proves  his  right  to  be 
called  a  pastor  of  men's  minds  by  the  understanding 
and  welcoming  friendliness  which  he  shows  to  all 
such  men.  But  after  all  they  are  dwelling  in  a  half- 
way house.  And  this  will  become  evident  either  to 
them  or  to  their  intellectual  progeny.  In  the  long 
run  one  must  believe  more  or  one  must  believe  less. 
In  the  last  analysis  the  only  way  to  keep  Christian 
morals  is  to  keep  the  Christian  God.  Friedrich 
Nietzsche  felt  a  deep  enough  scorn  for  men  like  Her- 
bert Spencer,  who  tried  to  crown  an  impersonal 
world  with  the  adopted  glory  of  an  ethic  which  was 
the  gift  of  the  most  nobly  personal  of  religions. 
Nietzsche  was  sure  that  he  represented  the  real  logic 
of  the  movement.  Many  nineteenth  century  men  had 
attacked  the  philosophy  of  Christianity  without  any 
thought  of  loosening  the  hold  of  its  ethics.  Nietzsche 
boldly  and  powerfully  declared  that  with  one  dis- 
carded the  other  must  go  too.  His  insight  was  clear 
enough.  If  you  accept  his  premises  there  is  some- 
thing inevitable  about  his  conclusions  providing  you 
are  robust  and  daring  enough  to  accept  the  challenge 
and  fearlessly  follow  where  they  lead. 


24  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

All  this  is  illustrated  in  a  modern  story,  character- 
ized by  that  quick  and  penetrating  psychological  in. 
sight,  which  one  has  learned  to  expect  from  certain 
contemporary  novelists.  The  story  has  to  do  with  a 
father  and  a  daughter.  The  father  is  a  keen-minded 
worker  in  fields  demanding  the  most  exact  knowledge 
and  the  most  close  and  careful  thought.  He  has 
worked  out  a  philosophy  of  life  in  connection  with 
his  technical  activities.  He  has  ceased  to  believe  in 
personality.  He  believes  only  in  mechanical  and 
mathematical  forces.  He  reduces  all  experiences 
which  seem  personal  to  impersonal  terms.  But  he 
has  kept  a  conscience  which  is  the  product  of  another 
and  different  view  of  life  and  its  relationships.  He 
is  splendidly  honest.  He  is  nobly  self-controlled. 
And  he  is  finely  unselfish.  It  is  a  strange  day  in  his 
life  when  he  discovers  that  his  daughter,  who  is  fa- 
miliar with  his  technical  activities  and  has  a  certain 
expertness  in  respect  of  some  of  them,  has  used  her 
knowledge  in  order  in  the  most  skillful  fashion  to  ad- 
minister poison  to  a  person  whom  she  desires  to  have 
removed  from  the  world.  When  the  father  expostu- 
lates with  the  daughter  he  finds  her  beyond  the  reach 
of  his  sense  of  horror  and  shame.  She  tells  him  very 
frankly  that  if  he  chooses  to  maintain  ethical  distinc- 
tions which  really  have  no  place  in  his  view  of  the 
world  and  of  life,  that  is  quite  his  own  affair.  But 
as  for  her,  she  has  accepted  that  view  of  life  as  a 
series  of  mechanical  and  impersonal  reactions,  which 
he  has  taught  her.  She  is  simply  following  it  to  its 
logical  conclusions.  Of  course  there  is  no  place  for  a 
code  of  morals  in  such  a  view.    There  is  no  place  for 


THE  ADVENTUROUS   GOD  25 

responsibility  in  such  a  view.  What  he  calls  murder 
is  simply  an  event  in  the  natural  order  and  there  is 
no  real  place  for  praise  or  blame.  All  this  seems 
shocking  enough.  But  the  truth  is  that  in  the  long 
run  if  you  insist  on  having  an  impersonal  universe 
there  will  arise  a  generation  which  will  insist  upon 
going  the  whole  logical  length  of  the  conclusions  im- 
plicit in  such  a  view.  If  you  are  going  to  keep  ethics 
as  a  permanent  part  of  the  life  of  man  you  must  keep 
the  foundation  in  an  assured  conviction  regarding  a 
personal  and  righteous  God. 

Now  there  is  a  philosophical  dialectic  by  which  this 
position  can  be  amply  justified.  And  there  is  a 
method  by  which  it  can  be  built  into  a  view  which 
does  ample  justice  to  every  essential  element  in  the 
scientific  situation.  Close  analysis  will  make  it  clear 
that  the  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  nature  is  itself  an 
act  of  faith,  and  that  at  last  the  world  with  which  the 
scientist  deals  requires  a  theistic  basis  for  its  order- 
liness, just  as  the  world  with  which  the  student  of 
ethics  deals  requires  a  theistic  basis  for  its  continu- 
ance. But  all  this  is  aside  from  the  method  and  the 
approach  of  this  particular  series  of  lectures.  We  are 
discussing  the  productive  beliefs.  And  we  are  point- 
ing out  the  necessity  of  a  certain  view  of  God  if  all 
those  sanctions  which  we  call  ethical  are  to  maintain 
their  place  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Our  whole  point 
is  that  life  itself  will  demand  those  beliefs  which  are 
necessary  to  its  fullest  and  amplest  functioning,  and 
we  already  see  that  a  belief  in  God  has  a  notable 
place  upon  this  basis  of  judgment. 

We  are  now  ready  for  a  question  which  will  carry 


26  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

us  into  the  heart  of  our  discussion.  The  question 
may  be  put  in  this  form :  What  is  that  view  of  God 
which  is  most  potential  for  men  living  under  the 
conditions  and  pressures  and  experiences  of  this 
world  in  process  of  reconstruction  after  the  greatf 
war  ?  f 

' '  Our  sons  have  shown  us  God, ' '  cries  Mr.  Britling. 
The  tense  and  terrible  struggles  of  the  days  of  war, 
the  hours  of  waiting  and  the  hours  of  anxiety,  and 
the  last  dreadful  pang  of  bereavement  have  brought 
the  keen  and  self-conscious  and  half-flippant  man  of 
letters  to  a  place  where  he  has  a  new  and  mastering 
knowledge  of  contact  with  the  great  master  of  life. 
What  sort  of  a  God  is  it  who  commands  a  man's 
whole  life  in  such  an  hour?  We  are  not  consulting 
Mr.  Wells'  agile  mind  for  an  answer  to  this  question. 
We  are  consulting  Mr.  Britling 's  profound  experi- 
ence for  a  guide.  Suppose  we  put  the  whole  matter 
in  another  way.  Here  is  a  boy  in  the  trenches  at  the 
very  front  with  No  Man's  Land  before  him.  The 
night  is  fantastically  illuminated  by  star-shells  and 
by  all  the  strange  and  lurid  lights  of  war.  In 
the  midst  of  all  the  noise,  at  the  heart  of  all  the 
bright  tumult,  the  boy  three  thousand  miles  from 
home  finds  himself  thinking.  What  sort  of  God  will 
master  and  hold  his  allegiance  in  that  hour,  when 
stripped  of  make-believe  and  subterfuge  he  confronts 
the  very  reality  of  things  f  Here  is  a  world  the  whole 
sensitive  surface  of  whose  life  is  trembling  with  re- 
sponsive readiness  for  all  simple  and  true  and  au- 
thentic impressions  after  its  far  thrown  agony  of 
war.    What  sort  of  a  God  will  write  his  name  on  the 


THE  ADVENTUROUS   GOD  27 

very  fibre  of  the  age's  life  and  leave  it  as  the  deepest 
and  most  potent  impression? 

When  we  approach  the  matter  in  any  such  fashion 
as  this  it  is  clear  at  once  that  a  static,  immovable 
God,  sitting  alone  in  the  solemn  splendours  of  his 
own  perfections  will  not  move  the  age  in  which  we 
live.  And  it  is  equally  evident  that  a  God  suspended 
at  the  end  of  a  syllogism,  or  a  remote  and  bewilder- 
ing deity  found  at  the  end  of  some  intricate  and 
winding  path  of  dialectic  will  not  master  the  minds, 
and  quicken  the  hearts,  and  compel  the  consciences 
of  the  men  and  women  alive  to-day.  If  we  cannot 
find  a  God  who  will  meet  us  at  the  most  intense  and 
real  spot  in  our  own  experience,  if  we  cannot  find  a 
God  who  can  parallel  our  experiences  with  experi- 
ences of  his  own  which  for  all  their  high  and  com- 
manding quality  make  him  comprehensible  to  us,  and 
make  us  comprehensible  to  him,  we  cannot  find  a  God 
at  all.  A  First  Cause  is  an  immensely  interesting 
goal  of  a  certain  process  of  thought.  But  a  First 
Cause  is  simply  unable  to  do  for  us  that  which  we 
supremely  need,  if  he  is  simply  a  First  Cause  and 
nothing  more. 

What  is  that  aspect  of  human  life  which  is  most 
deeply  characteristic  and  defining?  What  is  that 
aspect  of  contemporary  experience  which  has  burned 
itself  most  deeply  into  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men  ? 
The  answer  to  one  question  is  the  answer  to  the  other. 
The  strange  deep  central  experience  in  life  which 
rouses  us  to  fear  and  question  and  hope  is  just  this. 
Life  is  an  adventure.  We  have  sailed  from  a  mys- 
terious port.    We  are  passing  through  a  succession 


28  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

of  bewildering  experiences.  We  move  toward  a  far- 
off  goal  of  our  desire.  Life  is  an  adventure.  It  is 
full  of  risks.  You  must  gather  all  your  daring,  and 
all  your  faith  and  all  your  hope  in  order  to  live  at 
all.  And  just  this  very  demand  in  clearest  and 
sharpest  perspective  has  been  the  characteristic  of 
contemporary  life.  The  two  million  boys  who  went 
to  France,  the  boys  in  camps  at  home,  the  fathers  and 
mothers  spending  their  vitality  in  vicarious  giving, 
all  these  represent  a  great  adventure.  It  is  an  ad- 
venture of  faith.  It  takes  great  risks  in  the  name  of 
an  ideal.  It  goes  forth  with  dauntless  decision  to  do 
the  thing  which  must  be  done,  whatever  the  cost. 
The  very  nature  of  life  is  moral  adventure.  And 
supremely  the  very  nature  of  contemporary  life  has 
been  moral  adventure. 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  only  God 
who  can  speak  with  compulsion  to  our  time,  or 
to  any  time  deeply  conscious  of  the  sharp  reali- 
ties of  human  experience,  is  a  God  who  knows 
moral  adventure  as  a  personal  experience.  He  must 
be  a  moral  adventurer  too.  The  tender  serenities 
which  are  sweetly  expressed  in  the  thought  of  a  God 
across  the  endless  calm  of  whose  divine  life  there 
never  blows  a  breath  of  tempest  have  their  own  place 
in  life.  But  in  the  storm-tossed  world  where  we  live 
we  can  only  worship  a  God  like  some  cedar  of  Leba- 
non, through  whose  branches  the  impetuous  storms 
have  blown,  and  which  has  held  fast  and  steady  in 
spite  of  all  the  storms.  Only  a  storm  God  can  hear 
the  prayers  of  men  and  women  who  have  to  live  in 
the  storm. 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  29 

"When  we  look  back  upon  our  Christian  heritage 
from  the  standpoint  of  this  conception  we  are  fairly- 
startled  at  the  riches  which  confront  us.  One  of 
these  days  somebody  will  have  to  write  a  book  about 
the  unsuspected  implications  of  the  Christian  religion. 
And  when  the  book  is  adequately  written  it  will  ex- 
pand itself  into  a  library.  Moliere's  famous  charac- 
ter was  thunderstruck  to  find  that  all  his  life  he  had 
been  speaking  prose  without  knowing  it.  We  are  al- 
most equally  astonished  when  we  discover  that  we 
have  had  a  great  masterful  adventurous  God  all  the 
while,  and  yet  we  have  spent  a  good  deal  of  our  time 
saying  perfectly  incidental  and  perfectly  innocuous 
things  about  Him.  Was  it  Lowell  who  once  said  that 
there  was  dynamite  in  the  New  Testament  if  anybody 
should  ever  happen  to  discover  it?  There  is  surely 
dynamite  in  the  Christian  thought  of  God.  It  is 
simply  full  of  potential  explosiveness. 

We  meet  the  adventurous  God,  first,  when  we  think  £ 
of  creation.  The  more  you  think  of  it  the  more  as- 
tonishing creation  is.  And,  of  course,  I  am  not  now 
referring  to  any  of  the  Middle  Age  puzzles  as  to  the 
making  of  everything  out  of  nothing.  Nobody  has  a 
receipt  for  creation.  So  we  may  as  well  let  that  as- 
pect of  the  subject  pass.  The  wonderful  thing  about 
creation  is  the  making  of  people.  There  is  nothing 
especially  exciting  about  making  a  tree.  The  tree 
can  never  defy  you.  There  is  nothing  especially  dra- 
matic about  making  a  stone.  The  stone  is  helpless  in 
your  hands.  But  the  minute  you  make  a  person  you 
have  made  a  possible  foe.  A  person  can  love  back. 
He  can  also  hate  back.    And  when  you  have  a  world 


30  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

full  of  persons  you  are  in  danger  of  a  world-wide 
mutiny.  The  method  of  creation  does  not  change  all 
this.  You  can  have  all  the  millenniums  you  need  for 
the  most  dignified  unfolding  of  implicit  potencies. 
The  fact  remains  that  when  personality  emerges  and 
self-conscious  will  has  come  to  be,  the  curtain  is  ready 
to  rise  upon  a  scene  packed  with  thrills.  The  God 
who  took  all  the  risks  of  creation  was  the  most  amaz- 
ing adventurer  of  whom  we  can  conceive. 

A  sculptor  is  in  a  sense  an  adventurer.  He  puts  his 
very  soul  into  the  marble.  But  a  father  is  more  of  an 
adventurer,  for  he  is  responsible  for  the  existence  of 
a  being  who  may  break  his  heart.  The  Great  Father 
God  ran  the  risk  of  infinite  heart-break  for  the  sake 
of  the  hope  of  infinite  loving  companionship.  He 
took  risks  which  are  so  vast  and  so  far-reaching  that 
they  are  simply  beyond  the  range  of  our  thought. 

Now  the  moment  you  begin  to  think  of  the  God  of 
creation  in  this  fashion  He  begins  to  come  within 
the  range  of  sympathetic  understanding.  In  our  own 
small  way  we  have  had  experiences  which  are  paral- 
lel to  this.  We  can  find  a  platform  upon  which  to 
stand  in  order  to  speak  to  such  a  God.  And  it  is  a 
mistake  to  call  this  sort  of  thinking  anthropomorphic. 
That  is  getting  the  actual  situation  upside  down. 
The  things  we  have  been  saying  have  their  real  con- 
nection with  that  flash  of  Biblical  insight  in  which  it 
is  said  that  God  created  man  in  His  own  image.  The 
Divine  Adventurer  put  the  heart  of  adventure  into 
the  children  of  men.  And  so  when  they  sense  the 
quality  of  His  adventure  it  awakens  echoes  of  ex- 
periences and  of  desires  in  their  own  hearts.    What 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  31 

life  is  in  a  small  way  to  them,  it  is  in  an  infinitely 
large  and  far-reaching  way  to  Him.  Even  the  boy  in 
the  trenches  can  find  a  point  of  contact  with  a  God 
whose  creation  of  man  was  the  most  amazing  and 
daring  adventure,  a  God  whose  every  relation  with 
man  has  involved  the  taking  of  infinite  risks. 

When  we  begin  to  think  of  providence  in  the  terms 
of  the  belief  in  an  adventurous  God  a  flood  of  human 
interest  is  thrown  upon  the  whole  subject.  Alice  in 
Wonderland  had  a  most  adventurous  time  trying  to 
play  a  game  of  croquet.  The  mallets  were  alive.  The 
balls  were  alive.  And  the  arches  were  alive.  Some- 
times when  she  went  to  strike  a  ball  it  would  quietly 
move  out  of  the  way.  Sometimes  when  a  ball  was 
driven  in  the  direction  of  an  arch  the  arch  would 
move  to  another  part  of  the  croquet  ground.  Some- 
times the  mallet  would  begin  to  sulk  and  refuse  to  hit 
the  ball.  Alice  felt  that  under  such  circumstances  it 
was  very  hard  to  play  a  successful  game.  Just  that 
problem  we  meet  in  life  all  the  while.  We  are  play- 
ing a  game  where  all  the  mallets  and  balls  and  arches 
are  alive.  What  an  intricate  and  bewildering  matter 
it  leads  life  to  be.  If  people  were  only  like  the  fig- 
ures which  you  put  on  a  page,  and  which  stay  there 
in  the  most  accommodating  fashion,  or  like  the  books 
which  never  get  tired  of  being  on  your  library 
shelf,  how  wonderfully  life  would  be  simplified.  Now 
this  difficulty  which  is  acute  enough  for  us,  God 
meets  in  an  infinitely  more  acute  fashion.  We  have 
to  get  something  done  in  spite  of  a  few  groups  of 
wilful  men  and  women.  God  has  to  get  everything 
done  in  spite  of  all  the  wilful  and  confused  men  and 


32  THE  PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

women  there  are  in  all  the  world.  The  practical 
functioning  of  God's  providential  activity  is  an  ad- 
venture which  grows  more  daring  and  bewildering 
the  more  we  think  of  it. 

At  this  point  it  is  possible  that  we  may  be  met  by 
some  advocate  of  the  theology  of  mathematical  logic 
armed  with  a  serious  objection.  He  reminds  us  that 
while  it  is  quite  true  that  such  a  conception  of  God 
as  that  which  we  are  advocating  would  have  immense 
power  to  fasten  itself  upon  men's  minds,  there  are 
reasons  for  saying  that  such  a  conception  is  impos- 
sible. He  reminds  us  that  we  seem  to  have  forgotten 
all  about  the  divine  foreknowledge. 

For  the  moment  this  objection  may  seem  very  im- 
pressive. But  very  quickly  we  are  likely  to  see  that 
one  difficulty  with  this  sort  of  argument  is  just  that 
it  proves  too  much.  If  you  go  through  the  life  of 
God  treating  all  of  His  attributes  in  this  hard  and 
absolute  fashion  the  result  is  that  you  make  any  sort 
of  real  experience  impossible  to  the  Divine  Being. 
When  perfection  by  being  loyal  to  some  aspects  of 
formal  definition  becomes  so  strangely  attentuated  a 
thing  that  it  leaves  God  incapable  of  having  real  ex- 
periences it  has  actually  led  to  a  conception  of  an 
imperfect  God.  When  we  allow  God  to  be  caught  in 
the  chains  of  His  own  attributes  we  have  really  be- 
come the  victims  of  our  own  words.  Many  a  philos- 
ophy of  the  Absolute  has  come  to  shipwreck  in  just 
this  fashion. 

What  we  must  say  amounts  to  this.  God's  om- 
niscience is  not  a  theoretical  quality.  It  is  just  the 
knowledge  which  is  possible  to  a  perfect  and  per- 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  33 

fectly  functioning  being.  It  is  the  knowledge  which 
is  connected  with  an  infinite  capacity  for  experience. 
It  is  not  the  knowledge  which  is  connected  with  an 
infinite  incapacity  for  experience.  And  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  case  his  knowledge  of  the  future  is  an 
ethical  thing  full  of  the  adventure  of  faith.  Just  as 
Jesus'  knowledge  of  His  own  person  and  of  His  mis- 
sion was  the  constant  adventure  of  a  daring  faith, 
so  God's  knowledge  of  the  future  is  not  a  hard  and 
mechanical  thing.  It  is  the  perpetual  adventure  of 
His  whole  life  reaching  out  in  the  faith  which  is  the 
expression  of  His  character  to  grasp  the  future.  In  t 
other  words,  there  is  always  a  splendid  element  of  J 
risk  even  in  foreknowledge.  In  its  own  way  it  re- 
sembles the  faith  of  a  patriot  in  his  country  and  the 
faith  of  a  prophet  in  his  message.  If  it  is  true  that 
man  is  justified  by  faith  it  is  also  true  that  in  this 
profound  and  wonderful  sense  God  is  justified  by 
faith. 

Now  all  of  this  may  involve  speculative  difficulties 
to  a  certain  type  of  mind.  But  it  touches  experience 
at  every  point.  And  we  are  not  trying  to  satisfy  the 
formal  logician.  We  are  trying  to  satisfy  the  hungry 
life  which  is  crying  out  for  a  vital  God,  whose  experi- 
ences strike  a  note  of  reality  and  authenticity  in 
human  life. 

And  this  leads  us  to  say  that  the  God  we  can  wor- 
ship must  have  infinite  range  in  the  emotional  as  well  / 
as  in  the  intellectual  realm.    That  eternal  calm  per- 
petually undisturbed  by  the  tearing,  torturing  sur- 
prises of  human  life  which  some  thinkers  would  as-, 
cribe  to  the  Deity  is  surely  not  characteristic  of' 


34  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

the  God  of  whom  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  tell.  I 
When  Hosea  shows  us  God  as  a  husband  broken  * 
hearted  over  the  ways  of  a  false  wife,  he  uses  perhaps 
the  most  daring  figure  in  the  Old  Testament.  And 
with  a  fearlessness  which  startles  the  reader  of  his 
words  he  pictures  the  passionate  pain  of  the  God  to 
whom  Israel  has  been  untrue.  And  the  New  Testa- 
ment gives  us  a  sudden  glimpse  of  the  Spirit  of  God  as 
eternally  groaning  with  the  weight  of  human  tragedy  / 
and  bearing  in  the  divine  life  the  burden  of  constant  j 
suffering  over  human  sin  and  pain.  There  is  a  full-' 
ness  of  life  in  the  realm  of  feeling  reflected  in  the  Bib- 
lical interpretation  of  God  which  we  have  never  quite 
dared  to  face  in  all  its  implications.  It  means  at 
least  that  God  has  gone  the  whole  adventurous  way  of 
getting  under  the  entire  emotional  burden  of  human 
life.  All  of  this,  of  course,  comes  to  a  supreme  ex- 
pression in  the  incarnation.  Of  this  we  shall  speak 
in  a  closer  fashion  in  a  later  lecture.  Just  now  we 
will  content  ourselves  by  calling  to  mind  the  fact 
that  the  God  of  whom  the  Bible  tells  could  not  be 
content  to  be  an  infinite  spectator,  not  even  a 
friendly  and  sympathetic  spectator.  He  could  not 
keep  out  of  the  tragedy.  He  could  not  see  suffering 
and  remain  away  from  the  place  where  men  suffered 
wounds.  He  came  into  the  world.  He  bent  under 
its  burden  of  selfishness  and  brutality  and  woe.  The 
adventurous  God  came  where  the  way  was  hardest. 
He  came  where  the  battle  seemed  lost.  He  broke  his 
way  into  human  life  filled  with  the  passionate  pur- 
pose of  a  great  rescue. 

It  is  evident  at  once  that  whatever  speculative 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  35 

problems  may  be  raised  this  is  the  sort  of  a  God  men 
in  this  dreadfully  pressed  and  burdened  world  can 
worship.  He  has  not  kept  away  from  the  battle-line. 
He  has  come  where  the  fighting  is  fiercest.  He  is 
with  men  to  the  very  end  of  their  hard  and  difficult 
way. 

But  if  we  would  feel  the  full  impact  of  the  appeal 
of  all  this  we  must  attempt  to  press  a  little  deeper 
into  its  meaning  for  God's  own  life.  And  the  thing 
which  saves  such  an  endeavour  from  presumption  is 
the  very  fact  that  if  we  are  to  come  to  any  living  and 
transforming  relation  to  God  so  that  He  sweeps  into 
our  lives  with  the  power  of  a  great  and  saving  energy 
it  must  be  because  we  have  looked  into  His  own » 
heart  and  have  found  there  the  thing  which  masters] 
ours  forever. 

The  world  into  which  God  came  in  all  the  adven- 
turous eagerness  of  the  incarnation  was  a  world  torn 
and  broken  by  a  hard  and  remorseless  evil,  a  sodden 
brutishness,  and  a  coarse  waywardness,  that  might 
easily  have  seemed  to  justify  the  belief  that  the  whole 
experiment  of  creation  had  been  a  failure.  But  it 
was  this  very  world  in  which  God  would  not  lose  • 
faith.  It  was  this  very  world  in  which  He  persisted 
in  believing.  It  was  this  very  world  into  whose  dark 
and  soiled  and  treacherous  life  He  came  breaking  in 
all  the  glory  of  a  great  faith  and  all  the  joyous  antici- 
pation of  a  great  love.  It  was  such  a  chivalrous  and 
high-hearted  adventure  as  makes  the  very  genius  of 
knightliness  transfigure  into  some  fine  super-knight- 
liness  the  very  character  of  the  God  we  see  revealed 
in  Jesus  Christ. 


36  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

But  the  adventure  goes  farther.  There  is  nothing 
so  terrible  but  that  God  must  feel  the  weight  of  it. 
There  is  nothing  so  slimy  and  black  in  its  beastliness 
but  God  must  feel  the  ugly  and  clammy  pressure  of 
it  as  it  reaches  out  after  His  own  life.  And  so  the 
Incarnate  Christ  bares  His  life  to  every  blast  of 
temptation  and  opens  His  heart  to  every  wound  of 
selfish  sin.  And  at  last  on  the  cross  it  breaks  His 
heart.  He  keeps  His  own  stainless,  loving,  winsome 
purity.  But  He  lets  sin  do  the  worst  it  can  to  Him. 
And  while  His  body  hangs  upon  a  visible  cross  His 
spirit  is  crucified  upon  an  invisible  cross  of  infinite 
pain.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  He  tasted  death  for 
every  man.  And  when  the  meaning  of  this  gets  into 
a  human  mind  and  searches  a  human  conscience  and 
winds  its  way  about  a  human  heart,  the  moral  and 
spiritual  splendour  of  it,  the  high  and  tragic  and  suf- 
fering adventure  of  it,  works  with  a  cutting  and  heal- 
ing surgery  upon  the  life  of  man.  We  see  the  heart 
of  God  in  the  adventure  of  redemption. 

Then  there  is  the  adventure  of  God 's  constant  and 
immanent  activity  in  the  world.  Many  men  have  be- 
lieved in  a  God  infinitely  far.  The  Platonic  philos- 
ophy when  it  slipped  into  the  thinking  of  Christian 
men  helped  them  to  feel  that  there  must  be  an  infi- 
nite gulf  between  the  perfect  God  and  imperfect  men. 
Conscience  emphasized  the  moral  gulf.  Metaphysics 
emphasized  the  ontologieal  gulf.  And  so  God  became 
a  remote  splendour  beheld  from  afar  to  many  a 
Christian.  We  live  in  better  days  in  this  regard. 
The  air  is  full  of  gracious  and  beautiful  reminders 
like  that  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  Victorian  sing- 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  37 

ers  that  God  is  nearer  to  us  than  our  breathing  and 
closer  than  hands  or  feet.  But  much  as  we  have  all 
received  from  the  brooding  thought  of  seers  about  the 
immanent  God,  we  have  hardly  come  to  apprehend 
the  meaning  of  the  daily  and  nightly  adventure  of 
God's  presence  in  the  world. 

We  do  not  need  to  turn  Pantheists  in  order  to  have 
a  deep  and  fruitful  conception  of  God's  presence  in 
the  world.  We  do  not  need  to  be  caught  in  the  inar- 
ticulate confusions  of  the  ancient  hylozoism  in  order 
to  come  to  a  real  apprehension  of  what  it  means  that 
God  is  the  source  of  all  that  is  vital  in  the  world. 
God  is  more  than  the  world.  But  the  world  has  no 
existence  for  a  single  moment  apart  from  His  instant  * 
and  present  power.  God  is  vastly  more  than  the 
vital  principle  moving  with  mysterious  might  through  ^ 
all  things.  But  there  is  nothing  vital  anywhere 
which  does  not  owe  its  existence  and  its  very  quality 
to  His  immediate  activity.  If  His  potent  will  were  to 
be  absent  for  an  instant  all  the  vast  wonder  of  cre- 
ation would  cease  to  be.  His  instantly  present  activ- 
ity is  seen  in  the  blooming  of  the  flower,  in  the  leaves 
and  the  fruit  of  the  tree,  in  the  far  flight  of  the  bird, 
in  the  whole  amazing  vital  expression  of  living  things 
in  the  world.  The  immanent  actively  present  God 
accounts  for  them  all.  We  have  at  least  passed  from 
the  eighteenth  century  deistic  conception  that  God 
made  the  universe,  set  it  going,  and  then  departed 
from  it,  leaving  it  to  run  on  and  on  like  a  vast  clock. 
We  know  that  the  God  who  made  the  world  is  the 
constant  and  perpetual  and  intimate  presence  whose 
activity  is  the  explanation  of  its  life. 


38  THE   PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

When  you  come  to  the  existence  of  men  and 
women  in  the  world  a  new  and  curiously  difficult 
problem  emerges.  If  their  very  breathing  is  made 
possible  by  an  act  of  the  immanent  God,  if  their  very 
life  is  a  perpetual  gift  from  Him,  then  we  must  lift 
our  minds  to  the  height  of  a  divine  patience  which 
gives  men  powers  in  the  very  instant  when  men  are 
misusing  those  very  powers  and  thwarting  the  will 
of  God  in  the  world.  When  a  man  makes  his  life  one 
long  tale  of  hard  and  cruel  selfishness  he  is  at  every 
moment  misusing  a  vital  energy  which  at  that  very 
moment  God  is  giving  to  him.  He  takes  a  gift  warm 
with  the  touch  of  God  and  soils  it  with  his  own  hard 
self-will.  When  a  man  sinks  into  vice  and  wallows 
in  depths  of  beastliness  he  is  prostituting  a  vitality 
which  at  that  very  time  is  coming  to  him  fresh  from 
the  pure  hand  of  God.  When  a  man  breaks  out  in 
furious  profanity  he  is  using  the  very  strength  which 
God  is  giving  him  at  that  instant  to  hurl  back  defi- 
ance into  His  face.  When  God  made  free  persons  to 
live  in  the  world  He  made  creatures  who  could  use 
His  constant  and  marvellous  gift  of  life,  His  perpet- 
ual creation  which  keeps  men  alive  in  the  world,  the 
intimate  and  wonderful  gift  of  His  immanent  pres- 
ence, in  soiling  and  defiling  ways,  a  deadly  and  das- 
tardly prostitution  of  the  noblest  gifts  just  as  they 
come  with  the  breath  of  God  upon  them. 

You  cannot  solve  the  problem  of  such  amazing  and 
noble  patience  in  the  terms  of  any  thought  of  a  static 
God.  You  can  only  understand  it  as  you  think  of  the 
Master  of  Life  as  a  great  adventurer  taking  infinite 
risks  in  the  name  of  a  moral  and  spiritual  response 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  39 

for  which.  He  hopes  and  in  which  He  deeply  believes. 
For  man  is  capable  of  turning  the  nearness  of  the 
immanent  God  into  something  infinitely  more  won- 
derful than  the  constant  power  which  supports  his 
life.  He  can  rise  from  the  nearness  of  physical  de- 
pendence into  the  nearness  of  moral  and  spiritual 
fellowship.  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConncll  has  worked 
out  the  distinction  in  his  finely  wrought  little  volume, 
"The  Diviner  Immanence."  God  gives  to  all  men 
that  immanent  activity  which  presents  them  with  life 
and  enables  them  to  function  in  the  world.  That  other 
gift  of  His  presence  in  moral  and  spiritual  fellowship 
they  must  appreciate,  they  must  accept,  they  must  re- 
ceive. And  it  is  the  possibility  and  the  actuality  of 
this  second  and  ethically  deeper  kind  of  immanence 
which  justifies  the  whole  experiment.  But  the  very 
realization  of  these  things  startles  us.  That  divine 
faith  which  takes  all  the  risks  of  so  tremendous  an 
experiment  bewilders  us.  That  infinite  and  patient 
hopefulness  which  unwearied  and  undismayed  moves 
its  way  through  the  entanglement  of  human  person- 
alities, and  believes  and  hopes  and  expects  a  great 
ethical  and  spiritual  outcome  astonishes  us.  That 
torn  and  wounded  heart  of  God  which  throbs  with  its 
age-long  pain  over  the  passionate  sin  of  men  shocks 
us  into  a  new  and  acute  consciousness  as  to  the  won- 
der of  God's  love  and  the  remorseless  tragedy  of  evil. 
The  perpetual  adventure  of  the  immanent  God  in  His 
age-long  presence  in  the  world  awes  and  holds  us 
with  an  inescapable  power. 

One  thing  at  least  is  perfectly  clear.    A  man  can 
keep  on  living  if  he  has  such  a  God  as  this.    However 


40  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

hard  the  blows  which  life  strikes,  however  tense  and 
terrible  the  experiences  through  which  he  must  pass, 
he  knows  that  the  Master  of  Life  understands  his 
pang  through  the  infinite  passion  of  His  own  pain. 
However  hard  the  strain  of  suspense  and  waiting, 
however  cruel  the  vicissitudes  of  life,  he  knows  that 
the  experience  of  strained  and  difficult  adventure  is 
not  something  foreign  to  God.  It  is  something  in 
which  God  participates.  At  the  battle  front  such  a 
God  is  real  and  high  and  mighty  and  commanding 
and  is  potently  and  gloriously  present.  In  the  longest 
hour  of  the  commonplace  round  of  the  tense  succes- 
sion of  events  with  no  power  to  feed  the  spirit  and  no 
power  to  rouse  the  heart,  such  a  God  lifts  the  whole 
experience  into  a  meaning  unknown  before,  and 
calms  and  steadies  the  spirit  for  the  difficult  demand 
of  the  colourless  days.  When  a  man  bites  into  life 
and  gets  the  full  amazing  taste  of  it,  the  glory  and  the 
pain,  the  tragedy  and  the  splendour,  until  its  trem- 
bling vitalities  move  like  quicksilver  in  his  veins,  such 
a  God  can  come  with  an  authentic  touch  of  reality 
more  potent  than  his  most  vivid  experience,  more 
mastering  than  his  most  electric  consciousness  of 
the  meaning  of  life.  Such  a  God  is  with  you  all  the 
way  through.  You  can  never  come  to  a  place  where 
you  cannot  find  Him,  because  He  has  always  been 
there  before  you  came. 

Over  against  this  living  and  pulsing  God  put  the 
static  deity  of  mere  academic  contemplation.  Over 
against  this  warmly  vital  deity  put  a  mechanical  uni- 
verse of  precise  and  eternally  reacting  forces  with 
no  flash  of  higher  consciousness  and  no  capacity  for 


THE  ADVENTUROUS  GOD  41 

the  understanding  of  passion  or  pain.  The  very  con- 
trast makes  it  clear  that  the  whole  nature  of  man 
demands  with  all  the  energy  of  its  deepest  and  most 
defining  qualities  that  high  adventurous  deity  whose 
experience  matches  and  infinitely  transcends  the 
whole  range  of  the  experience  of  man,  and  yet  whose 
life  is  in  constant  touch  with  every  quivering  aspect 
of  human  need. 

The  Bible  is  rich  in  the  consciousness  that  the  God 
whose  word  it  speaks  is  such  a  deity  as  this.  The  Old 
Testament  prophets  speak  in  God's  name  words 
which  flame  with  every  quality  of  human  feeling 
and  burn  with  all  the  passion  of  an  infinitely  rich 
life.  The  New  Testament  flings  into  our  minds  the 
vision  of  a  God  who  could  not  be  silent  in  Heaven, 
but  broke  the  stillness  of  the  ages  in  an  outburst  of 
joy:  "My  Beloved  Son!"  The  quick  intuition  of 
one  mind  fed  by  the  very  richness  of  that  new  life 
which  the  New  Testament  expressed,  pressed  its  way 
back  in  daring  thought  regarding  the  age-long  agony 
of  God's  pain  over  sin  and  wrote  of  the  Lamb  slain 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world.  Breathing 
through  the  very  pages  of  the  Old  Testament  and 
the  New,  swelling  in  the  power  of  the  fierce  words  of 
Amos,  sobbing  in  the  pang  of  Hosea's  pain,  supremely 
alive  in  the  whole  experience  of  Jesus  as  He  opened 
every  part  of  His  life  to  the  full  impact  of  experi- 
ence; singing  and  weeping,  hoping  and  believing, 
this  thought  of  a  God  moving  His  painful  and  ad- 
venturous and  at  last  triumphant  course  through  all 
the  ways  of  human  life,  is  the  deep  and  essential 
note  of  the  Bible. 


42  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

To  be  sure  this  is  only  one  of  the  important  things 
which  must  be  said  about  God  and  His  relation  to 
human  life.  But  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this 
represents  the  burning  point  of  contact  between  our 
age  and  the  Almighty.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  as  we  move  along  such  lines  as  this  we  are  find- 
ing the  way  in  which  the  thought  of  God  is  to  get  a 
new  grip  upon  the  life  of  our  age.  The  experience  of 
contact  with  this  sort  of  God  completely  authenti- 
cates and  validates  the  claims  of  religion.  It  does 
more.    It  solves  the  problem  of  human  life. 


LECTURE  II 
THE  INVADING  EVIL 


LECTURE  II 

THE   INVADING  EVIL 

THERE  is  something  wonderfully  alluring 
about  optimism.  There  is  something  splen- 
didly contagious  about  gladness.  There  is 
a  practically  propelling  power  about  that  confident 
and  gay  and  hearty  enthusiasm  for  life  which  plans 
for  success  and  expects  success  and  smiles  at  ob- 
stacles. When  that  brilliant  philosopher  Gottfried 
Wilhelm  Leibnitz,  whose  personal  life  was  a  long  story 
of  distinguished  achievement,  reached  the  conclusion 
that  everything  is  for  the  best  in  the  best  possible  of 
worlds  he  struck  a  chord  which  was  to  vibrate  all 
through  eighteenth  century  optimism.  Deism  be- 
lieved in  an  absent  God  and  a  self-sufficient  man. 
The  benevolent  despots  of  the  eighteenth  century  had 
a  buoyant  confidence  as  to  the  new  ideals  and  the 
new  institutions  which  they  were  to  bring  into  the  life 
of  the  world.  The  sun  was  shining  brightly.  The 
long  day  of  achievement  lay  ahead.  The  world  was 
to  be  made  over  after  the  fashion  of  the  mind's  and 
heart's  desire.  A  great  deal  of  this  resilient  confi- 
dence went  down  in  the  shuddering  horrors  of  the 
French  Revolution.  A  man  like  Wordsworth  never 
lived  in  the  same  splendour-lit  world  again  after  the 
worst  days  in  France.    And  the  shrewd,  cynical  era 

45 


46  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

of  Metternich  did  much  to  send  to  its  grave  the  emerg- 
ing glad  idealisms  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

Then  with  slow  but  sure  momentum  the  friendly 
joyous  hopefulness  of  the  dreamers  began  to  come  to 
the  ascendency  again.  Notable  reforms  were  achieved. 
If  this  was  not  the  best  possible  world  it  was 
clearly  in  process  of  being  made  a  very  much  better 
world.  The  Victorian  hopefulness  bloomed  every- 
where. And  after  the  arrival  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury many  people  who  were  inclined  to  speak  scorn- 
fully of  the  mid- Victorian  idealism  cherished  more  of 
it  in  their  hearts  than  they  knew.  The  carefully  pol-. 
ished  bright  shining  optimism  of  the  first  decade  and 
more  of  the  twentieth  century  had  a  quality  all  of  its 
own.  Success  became  a  creed.  Confidence  became  a 
professional  asset.  One  brilliant  university  presi- 
dent in  America  proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  and 
to  the  satisfaction  of  his  friends  and  admirers  that 
there  could  never  be  another  war.  To  be  sure  there 
was  social  unrest.  But  even  the  extreme  social 
radicals  had  the  most  naive  and  confident  belief  in 
their  capacity  to  remould  the  world  after  the  fashion 
of  their  dreams.  However  different  men  were  in 
other  regards  most  of  them  were  alike  in  their  in- 
stinctive response  to  the  widely  diffused  belief  that 
we  had  emerged.  The  dark  and  hideous  things  were 
to  be  no  more.  Man  had  definitely  parted  company 
with  the  ape. 

Then  came  nineteen  fourteen.  The  earth  trembled. 
The  preliminary  tremor  became  a  terrible  and  con- 
tinued shaking  of  the  very  foundations  of  things. 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  47 

Year  after  year  went  on.  All  the  resources  of  civi- 
lization were  mobilized  for  such  a  conflict  as  the  im- 
agination of  man  had  never  conceived.  The  depths 
of  the  sea  saw  new  and  strange  sights  as  the  coiling 
monsters  of  the  deep  moved  in  their  treacherous  way 
among  them.  The  sky  itself  became  the  citadel  of 
war.  The  heavens  became  a  hell  of  conflict.  And 
with  remorseless  cruelty  every  resource  of  modern 
science  was  brought  to  bear  on  the  work  of  destruc- 
tion. The  men  who  would  have  destroyed  all  that 
makes  life  have  deep  and  noble  meaning  led  the  way. 
The  men  who  fought  to  preserve  the  great  sanctities 
of  life  were  driven  to  fight  them  with  their  own  fire. 
And  the  hardest  and  most  disillusioning  fact  about 
it  all  was  that  the  very  country  most  proud  of  its  civi- 
lization, most  conscious  of  its  achievements  in  every 
realm  of  scholarship  and  philosophy,  of  science  and 
of  art,  was  the  land  which  plunged  the  world  into 
this  cruel  chaos  of  conflict.  The  old  optimism  it 
seemed  was  struck  lifeless.  The  old  gay  confidence 
seemed  to  have  disappeared  forever.  To  be  sure  the 
very  years  of  conflict  brought  their  own  amazing 
story  of  moral  and  spiritual  victory.  The  sacrifices 
which  men  and  women  were  willing  to  make  in  order 
to  save  civilization,  the  flaming  idealism  which  swept 
many  a  young  soldier  past  all  the  brutalities  of  the 
conflict  in  a  singing  splendour  of  commitment  to  the 
great  cause,  the  fashion  in  which  a  new  and  noble 
spirit  moved  through  the  Allied  peoples  giving  even 
common  men  at  times  a  sense  of  nearness  to  apocalyp- 
tic visions,  the  sustained  and  noble  and  enduring 
courage  which  gave  and  gave  and  gave  with  broken 


48  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

heart  but  with  lighted  eye  and  with  illuminated 
soul :  all  these  things  told  a  story  of  reinforced  ideal- 
ism, of  infinite  moral  and  spiritual  values  rescued 
from  the  wreck  of  war. 

But  none  of  these  things  were  like  the  old  opti- 
mism. There  was  a  new  honesty.  There  was  a  new 
and  frank  facing  of  ugly  facts.  There  was  all  that 
deep  and  solemn  seriousness  which  came  from  the 
understanding  that  in  every  Allied  country  there  was 
an  inner  ethical  and  spiritual  conflict.  Each  land 
had  to  be  saved  from  the  subtle  menace  represented 
by  the  emerging  of  the  very  spirit  against  which  the 
war  had  been  fought.  When  peace  came  and  the  first 
days  of  glorious  and  world-wide  relief  had  passed 
those  multitudinous  and  disillusioning  facts  which 
always  come  to  light  in  the  wake  of  a  great  war  began 
to  appear.  And  the  unlovely  by-products  of  the 
great  endeavour  became  painfully  evident.  Some 
men  began  to  be  tempted  to  cast  away  that  passionate 
belief  in  the  high  meaning  of  the  whole  enterprise 
which  had  held  them  steady  during  the  worst  days  of 
the  conflict.  Russia  seemed  an  anti-climax  to  all  the 
hopes  of  freedom.  Ugly  voices  prophesying  social 
disintegration  began  to  be  heard  in  every  land. 
Strong  and  sober  men  began  to  feel  the  very  struc- 
ture of  orderly  life  trembling  beneath  their  feet. 
Issues  began  to  be  clouded  in  many  minds.  The 
surest  and  the  bravest  found  a  noble  way  in  which 
to  rescue  a  permanent  passion  from  the  hour  of  reac- 
tion. The  wisest  leaders  kept  their  eyes  surely  fixed 
upon  the  essential  things  and  did  not  lose  their  poise 
or  their  belief  in  the  eternal  value  of  the  thing  which 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  49 

had  been  achieved  and  was  to  be  fitted  into  the  very 
structure  of  the  world's  life.  But  even  they  had 
come  to  understand  that  the  philosophy  of  the  in- 
vincibility of  the  friendly  smile  has  been  hopelessly 
discredited.  Even  they  had  a  new  and  penetrating 
sense  of  evil  to  be  mastered  and  kept  under  as  well 
as  of  good  to  be  maintained.  The  glory  of  life  had 
not  departed.  But  the  tragedy  of  life  was  very  clear 
in  their  minds  and  in  their  hearts.  The  bright  lights 
were  still  burning.  But  there  was  a  new  conscious- 
ness of  the  dangerous  foes  who  would  like  to  put 
them  out. 

In  a  world  whose  moral  enthusiasms  and  whose 
moral  ideals  have  gone  through  such  a  period  of  stern 
testing  as  that  which  we  have  described  the  man  of 
to-day  must  attempt  to  work  out  his  own  analysis  of 
the  problem  of  evil  among  men.  It  is  by  no  means 
an  academic  process.  It  is  an  attempt  to  see  the 
ethical  experience  of  the  race  in  such  a  fashion  as  to 
be  able  to  function  adequately  in  just  the  sort  of 
world  in  which  we  live.  It  is  clear  that  a  superficial 
optimism  which  has  never  dared  to  face  the  hard 
and  cruel  facts  leaves  a  man  helpless  in  such  a  time 
as  ours.  It  is  clear  that  a  despairing  misanthropy 
which  has  seen  the  evil  and  nothing  but  the  evil 
brings  a  man  to  a  place  where  he  is  without  inspira- 
tion, without  any  sure  basis  of  hope,  and  without  that 
propelling  energy  which  will  enable  him  to  live  fruit- 
fully with  eyes  of  expectation  turned  toward  the 
future.  Can  we  be  entirely  honest  without  coming  to 
a  place  of  despair  ?  Can  we  retain  a  noble  optimism 
without  ignoring  the  difficult  facts  and  becoming 


50  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

superficial  ?  These  questions  are  very  insistent  in  the 
practical  demand  which  they  make  to-day. 

There  is  a  very  significant  history  of  men's  failure 
to  deal  adequately  with  this  problem.  In  fact,  as  bad 
as  the  situation  seems  without  any  philosophy  which 
attempts  to  guide  us  through  it,  there  is  the  discon- 
certing possibility  of  having  a  philosophy  which 
makes  the  whole  problem  more  acute,  more  black  and 
hopeless  than  it  was  when  we  simply  felt  that  we  did 
not  know  what  to  say  about  it. 

The  old  Persian  Dualism  represents  this  attitude 
of  mind  very  well.  The  problem  of  evil  is  felt  with 
an  acute  and  hard  persistence.  There  is  no  attempt 
to  escape  from  it  by  calling  black  white.  The  think- 
ers who  moulded  this  interpretation  looked  squarely 
at  the  fact  of  the  presence  of  dark  and  disintegrating 
evil  in  the  world.  Then  they  made  a  great  mistake. 
They  explained  this  evil  by  getting  it  into  the  very 
nature  of  things,  so  that  it  was  an  inherent  part  of 
the  universal  life.  They  even  allowed  it  to  climb  its 
hideous  way  into  the  life  of  the  Deity,  so  that  there 
was  a  god  of  evil  as  well  as  a  god  of  good  and  the  two 
were  perpetually  struggling  in  the  vast  spaces  of  the 
world.  There  is  a  sort  of  cosmic  splendour  in  such  a 
conception.  But  it  dignifies  evil  and  it  tends  to  cut 
the  edge  from  that  sharp  sense  of  personal  responsi- 
bility which  is  the  hope  of  moral  advancement  in  the 
world.  The  Manichcean  philosophy,  which  for  a 
while  held  Augustine  captive,  belongs  to  that  class  of 
interpretations  which  beginning  with  a  sort  of  fine 
ethical  realism  end  by  making  the  problem  more 
difficult  than  it  was  in  the  beginning.     The  ascetic 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  5 1 

view  which  sees  in  matter  and  the  material  life  some- 
thing which  is  essentially  and  necessarily  evil  com- 
mits the  fatal  mistake  of  giving  a  natural  instead  of 
an  ethical  explanation  of  evil,  and  so  of  striking  a 
blow  at  the  validity  of  the  moral  life  itself.  If  evil 
is  structural  in  the  life  of  the  world  then  men  are 
victims  and  the  talk  about  responsibility  seems  aside 
from  the  mark. 

This  view  of  evil,  as  an  essential  and  inevitable 
part  of  life,  has  a  way  of  running  underground  for  a 
long  time  and  then  appearing  again  in  the  full  light 
of  day.  You  can  find  it  in  some  dim  and  strange  and 
far-off  religion.  You  can  find  it  in  some  recent  inter- 
pretation of  biological  theory.  You  can  find  it  in 
some  wonderfully  clever  bit  of  literary  art.  Mrs. 
Humphrey  Ward  once  wrote  a  narrative, ' '  The  Story 
of  Bessie  Costrell."  It  was  the  grim  and  relentless 
tale  of  the  disintegration  of  a  life.  There  was  no 
light  anywhere.  Step  by  step  the  tragedy  unfolded 
with  remorseless  precision.  All  the  while  you  felt 
more  and  more  deeply  that  it  was  all  as  sure  as  fate. 
The  bad  thing  had  to  be  bad.  There  was  no  real  pos- 
sibility of  contrary  choice.  Evil  was  not  a  terrible 
thing  freely  chosen.  It  was  an  awful  fate  from 
which  there  was  no  escape. 

Now  we  must  be  willing  to  face  very  frankly  the 
limits  in  practical  working  of  this  boasted  possession 
of  personal  freedom.  We  can  never  forget  the  bitter 
cry  of  Jacob  Riis  after  he  had  studied  the  life  of  the 
little  children  in  the  slums  of  New  York:  "These 
children  are  not  born  into  the  world.  They  are 
damned  into  the  world."    We  must  be  ready  with 


52  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

unhesitating  candour  to  deal  with  all  these  hard  and 
confusing  facts  of  human  life  and  its  struggle.  But 
we  need  to  be  clear  from  the  start  that  unless  we  can 
find  a  way  to  root  the  problem  of  evil  in  the  will,  un- 
less we  can  take  it  at  last  to  that  deep  and  solemn 
place  where  motives  are  born  and  decisions  are  made, 
unless  we  can  trail  it  along  its  ugly  path  to  the  place 
where  a  free  man  accepts  it  or  rejects  it,  we  have  no 
right  to  talk  of  moral  responsibility,  and  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  real  and  commanding  ethical  sanction 
in  the  life  of  man.  The  weakness  of  even  very  noble 
forms  of  Calvinism  has  often  been  just  at  this  point. 
There  has  been  a  wonderfully  astute  treatment  of  the 
logic  of  evil.  But  there  has  not  been  a  frank  inspec- 
tion of  the  psychological  consequences  of  the  par- 
ticular interpretation  which  was  being  offered  to 
men.  As  a  result  the  very  existence  of  any  legitimate 
kind  of  responsibility  was  sacrificed.  Sometimes 
there  was  an  attempt  to  avoid  this  by  means  of  the 
most  subtle  and  brilliant  sort  of  dialectic.  But  when 
it  was  all  honestly  analyzed  one  had  to  admit  that  for 
all  the  fine  phrases  man  was  left  in  a  state  of  con- 
demnation for  that  which  he  could  by  no  means  help. 
When  we  go  over  the  entire  ground  we  must  admit 
that  there  are  aspects  of  the  situation  which  are  dis- 
cussed with  a  genuine  realism  by  those  theories  which 
seem  to  do  least  justice  to  the  presence  of  personal 
freedom  and  of  the  responsibility  which  freedom  in- 
volves. The  question  then  takes  this  form,  Is  there 
any  fashion  of  doing  justice  to  all  the  facts  and  yet 
of  putting  personal  and  uncoerced  choice  at  the 
center  of  every  human  life? 


• 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  53 

In  our  modern  dealing  with  the  problem  we  say  a 
great  deal  about  heredity  and  a  great  deal  about  en- 
vironment. And  we  do  wisely  enough,  for  these  fac- 
tors are  most  significant.  But  the  question  we  must 
insist  on  lifting  has  to  do  with  whether  these  factors, 
important  as  they  are,  do  really  probe  to  the  heart  of 
the  matter.  Is  evil  something  which  is  forced  upon 
us  from  without?  Is  it  something  which  without 
ever  asking  our  permission  arises  from  within?  Or 
is  there  a  capacity  for  creative  action  at  the  center  of 
every  human  life  which  makes  our  attitude  toward 
good  and  evil  in  the  profoundest  sense  our  own? 
Are  we  as  to  the  deepest  meaning  of  our  own  person- 
ality stronger  than  environment,  mightier  than  he- 
redity? In  this  deep  and  potent  sense  are  we  the 
captain  of  our  souls  ?    Are  we  the  architects  of  fate  ? 

The  whole  question  is  of  course  complicated  by  the 
fact  that  we  are  a  part  of  a  vast  social  organism. 
One  man  living  alone  on  a  desert  island  represents 
one  sort  of  problem.  But  the  moment  the  man  Fri- 
day appears  qualities  emerge  in  Robinson  Crusoe 
which  that  lonely  worthy  never  knew  that  he  pos- 
sessed until  this  particular  social  relationship  called 
them  forth.  Is  it  possible  to  think  of  ethics  in  the 
terms  of  social  solidarity  and  yet  deal  with  unflinch- 
ing fairness  with  the  individual?  Is  it  possible  to 
follow  all  the  coiling  ways  of  the  individual  ethical 
reaction  and  yet  see  in  true  perspective  all  the  ethical 
significance  of  the  group  ?  If  we  try  with  Protagoras 
to  measure  things  from  the  standpoint  of  the  indi- 
vidual man,  making  him  the  measure  of  all  our  judg- 
ments, will  we  ever  be  able  to  be  fair  to  all  the  com- 


54  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

plex  and  varied  social  entanglements?  If  we  try 
with  Plato  in  his  Republic  to  build  all  our  thoughts  of 
men  about  their  relation  to  the  ideal  state  will  we  not 
inevitably  be  unfair  to  the  individual?  When  we 
watch  the  complete  serenity  with  which  Plato  thinks 
of  the  exposure  of  weak  and  unlikely  infants  in  the 
name  of  the  robust  health  of  the  state  the  outlook 
along  this  path  does  not  seem  to  be  particularly  reas- 
suring. When  we  think  of  the  complete  ethical  and 
spiritual  anarchy  which  will  follow  an  attenuated 
individualism  which  goes  the  full  length  of  its  most 
demanding  logic,  we  do  not  feel  drawn  to  this  path. 

With  this  piling  of  one  difficulty  upon  another  we 
may  have  come  dangerously  near  to  producing  a  state 
of  mind  which  is  ready  to  think  of  the  whole  problem 
as  insoluble.  But  we  must  go  back  to  the  experience 
of  life  as  distinct  from  the  thought  about  life,  and  at 
once  we  will  find  that  despite  these  bewildering  diffi- 
culties the  sense  of  right  and  wrong  of  freedom  and 
of  responsibility  does  persist  in  the  race,  and  is  able 
to  function  in  such  a  fashion  as  to  produce  wonder- 
ful examples  of  physical  and  moral  and  spiritual 
heroism.  Whatever  the  difficulties  of  interpretation 
the  ethical  sanction  does  persist,  and  it  does  the  most 
constant  and  difficult  and  amazing  amount  of  work 
in  the  world.  In  the  light  of  this  actual  and  suc- 
cessful and  age-long  activity  we  come  to  have  new 
courage  as  we  approach  the  task  of  attempting  to  be 
fair  to  all  the  facts  and  yet  to  secure  a  view  of  per- 
sonality and  its  relation  to  evil  which  will  be  the 
basis  of  a  gripping  and  masterful  ethic  for  men. 

On  a  beautiful  summer  day,  seated  in  a  pleasure 


THE   INVADING  EVIL  55 

craft  on  some  such  fine  body  of  water  as  Puget 
Sound,  the  world  seems  a  place  of  amazing  charm 
and  loveliness.  The  great  snow  cone  of  Mount 
Rainier  rises  into  the  sky  on  one  side  and  on  the 
other  you  can  see  the  shining  summits  of  the  Olym- 
pics. The  sun  dances  gayly  in  the  water.  The  air  is 
full  of  a  certain  caressing  friendliness.  On  the 
heights  not  far  from  you  are  the  splendid  forms  of 
the  Douglas  fir  trees,  and  the  summer  wealth  of  grow- 
ing things  calls  to  you  from  above.  It  is  good  to  be 
alive.  It  is  a  wonderful  world  in  which  you  live. 
At  such  a  time  if  you  deliberately  turn  your  thought 
to  the  strange  and  defiling  mass  of  evil  in  the  world 
there  is  something  almost  unbelievable  about  it. 
Your  mind  has  been  cleansed  and  sharpened  by  the 
pure  beauty  of  the  day,  and  you  see  evil  in  all  its  un- 
disguised hideousness  against  that  background  of 
wholesomeness  and  beauty.  It  stabs  you  with  a  sud- 
den power  to  wound.  It  is  something  which  has  no 
right  to  be  in  the  world.  It  is  something  you  hate. 
It  is  something  you  would  like  to  destroy.  In  an  en- 
tirely different  background  the  same  thought  came 
to  many  a  boy  in  France.  With  the  instruments  of 
death  all  about  him,  with  the  sounds  of  destruction 
in  his  ears,  with  the  strange  and  defiling  sights  of 
war  holding  his  eyes,  there  came  a  sudden  sense  of 
astonishment  that  such  things  could  happen  in  the 
world.  Human  evil  on  this  vast  and  organized  scale 
seemed  a  preposterous  and  unbelievable  thing.  His 
eyes  cleansed  by  the  daily  cruel  experience  of  war 
saw  life  with  a  simple  directness  which  made  evil 
stand  out  in  its  inherent  blackness. 


56  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

So  in  peace,  or  in  war,  the  sense  of  life's  evil  trag- 
edy can  come  home  to  a  man.  If  he  is  of  a  carefully 
thoughtful  and  contemplative  type  of  mind  as  he 
pursues  his  meditations  the  evils  which  invade  human 
life  will  tend  to  classify  themselves,  and  through  a 
process  of  analysis  the  whole  subject  will  begin  to 
appear  in  new  and  clearer  relations. 

It  is  said  that  when  the  Congo  River  empties  into 
the  sea  it  carries  a  stream  of  black  into  the  ocean  for 
eight  miles.  That  river  which  we  call  the  past  is 
continually  emptying  a  dark  mass  of  evil  into  the 
present.  It  would  be  a  wonderful  thing  if  we  could 
all  begin  at  the  start  of  things.  But  we  simply  can- 
not do  that.  We  cannot  live  our  lives  apart  from  the 
fact  that  men  have  been  hating  and  deceiving  and 
sinking  into  dark  ways  of  vice  and  murdering  and 
violating  all  the  high  sanctities  for  thousands  of 
years.  The  cumulative  energy  of  it  has  gotten  into 
the  life  of  the  world.  The  good  of  the  past  too  pushes 
its  way  into  the  present.  And  so  it  comes  to  pass 
that  ancient  life  is  still  fighting  its  old  battles  on  the 
arena  of  the  life  of  men  who  are  in  the  world  to- 
day. 

There  is  a  great  deal  which  we  do  not  know  about 
heredity.  But  it  is  clear  that  our  ancestors  are  alive 
in  us  far  more  than  we  ordinarily  realize.  James 
Lane  Allen  has  a  story  of  a  young  man  who  stood  be- 
fore the  family  portraits  in  his  home.  He  was  think- 
ing particularly  of  two  men  at  whom  he  was  gazing. 
One  was  a  man  of  austere  and  sterling  character. 
The  other  was  a  gay  and  zestful  devourer  of  all  which 
allures  the  passionate  taste.    Each  of  these  men  was 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  57 

an  ancestor  of  the  young  fellow  who  stood  moodily 
looking  upon  their  pictures.  As  he  stood  there  he 
knew  that  those  two  old  men  were  fighting  inside 
him.  They  had  gotten  into  his  blood.  And  there 
they  fought  for  the  boy  years  and  years  after  they 
were  dead.  The  only  difficulty  with  this  illustration 
is  that  it  does  not  go  far  enough.  Not  two  men  but 
whole  companies  of  men  and  women  are  fighting  in 
all  of  us.  Old  selfishness  tries  to  peer  out  at  the 
world  through  our  eyes.  Old  indulgences  try  to  get 
some  fresh  and  satisfying  sensation  through  our 
bodies.  The  past  is  alive  in  us.  Its  poison  is  in  our 
blood. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  used  to  say,  in  his  clever 
way,  that  if  he  wanted  to  do  anything  with  a  young 
man  he  would  like  to  begin  with  his  grandfather. 
Really  the  genial  New  England  man  of  letters  was 
very  modest.  To  begin  with,  a  man's  grandfather  is 
not  going  very  far  back.  A  man  might  well  ask  for 
more  than  that.  In  fact,  when  you  begin  to  think 
where  you  would  really  like  to  begin  centuries  are 
apt  to  seem  incidental.  One  would  like  to  go  back  of 
the  first  strain  of  physical  taint,  one  would  like  to  go 
back  of  the  first  ancestor  who  represented  a  defiant 
and  evil  temper,  one  would  like  to  go  back  of  the  first 
man  who  made  desire  and  not  duty  the  captain  of  his 
life,  one  would  like  to  anticipate  the  beginning  of 
conscious  evil  and  the  beginnings  of  the  perversion 
of  noble  forces  to  ignoble  uses,  then  if  one  could  move 
down  the  long  trail  of  the  years  and  stand  guard  at 
the  door  of  the  life,  all  its  meaning  might  be  different. 
In  any  event  we  have  to  admit  that  many  of  the 


58  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

clouds  we  trail  as  we  come  into  the  world  represent 
anything  but  glory.  Evil  has  become  bone  of  the 
race 's  bone.  Evil  has  become  flesh  of  its  flesh.  And 
all  this  past  writhing  and  inarticulate  is  pressing 
against  the  bars  of  the  will,  seeking  expression  and 
activity  and  gratification  in  the  lives  of  the  men  and 
the  women  who  are  alive  in  the  world  to-day.  So 
the  evil  of  the  past  invades  the  present  through 
heredity. 

More  than  this  the  past  has  left  many  tangible  re- 
mains. There  is  that  monumental  mass  of  literature 
which  has  been  preserved  to  us  from  other  days. 
There  is  that  product  of  the  artistic  mind  which  in 
various  forms  survives  while  the  ages  pass.  Then 
there  are  all  sorts  of  other  survivals,  from  stately 
architecture  down  to  domestic  utensils.  Now  there 
is  no  doubt  in  the  world  that  much  of  this  repre- 
sents a  priceless  heritage.  The  passionless,  perfect 
harmony  of  Greek  art  at  its  best,  the  winged  as- 
piration of  that  Gothic  architecture  which  burned 
with  longing  for  the  heights  of  moral  and  spiritual 
achievement,  the  kingly  harmony  of  words  set  to  the 
music  of  exquisite  expression  in  many  a  tongue,  the 
poise  and  the  steadiness  of  Roman  law,  the  summon- 
ing inspiration  of  many  an  ancient  biography:  all 
these  are  part  of  the  treasure  of  the  world.  It  is 
painful  to  think  of  our  poverty  were  we  to  lose  them 
out  of  our  lives. 

But  this  is  not  all  of  the  story.  And  we  must  be 
honest  enough  to  think  of  the  rest  of  the  story. 
When  the  ashes  which  had  covered  Pompeii  for  many 
a  century  were  taken  away,  it  was  as  if  the  past  had 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  59 

suddenly  become  contemporaneous.  And  with  all  the 
knowledge  which  we  welcome  in  that  uncovered  long- 
buried  town,  there  is  some  knowledge  which  we  re- 
ceive with  loathing.  Signs  that  tempted  men  to  ways 
of  slimy  evil  centuries  ago  have  been  uncovered  in 
all  their  unblushing  hideousness  and  so  the  old  ser- 
pents hiss  in  the  modern  world.  To  be  entirely 
familiar  with  the  literature  of  any  people  is  to  go 
through  the  experience  of  reading  some  things  which 
trail  their  way  like  poison  through  the  mind.  There 
is  more  than  exquisite  and  stately  beauty  in  the  clas- 
sics. They  make  immortal  the  vices  as  well  as  the  vir- 
tues of  antiquity.  And  so  the  hot  and  lawless  blood 
of  two  thousand  years  ago  calls  to  the  hot  and  law- 
less blood  of  to-day.  History  itself  is  a  temptation 
as  well  as  an  inspiration.  It  has  great  tales  to  tell. 
Sometimes  we  pause  in  wonder  hardly  daring  to  be- 
lieve that  humanity  could  have  risen  to  such  heights. 
The  glory  of  self-control,  the  radiance  of  unselfish 
love,  the  high  splendour  of  self-sacrifice,  how  they 
shine  on  the  living  pages  of  those  books  by  whose 
magic  we  commune  with  the  past. 

But  more  than  that.  What  a  cumulative  tale  of 
evil  and  treachery  and  beastliness  history  has  to  tell. 
Age  after  age  the  old  vices  emerge.  Age  after  age 
the  old  hard  selfishnesses  dominate  the  minds  of  men 
and  send  forth  their  hands  in  cruel  deeds.  To  be  an 
expert  in  history  is  to  become  expert  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  kinds  of  evil  things  which  men  have  done 
in  the  world.  Innocence  betrayed,  weakness  exploited, 
strength  misused  for  evil  purposes.  How  history 
reeks  with  the  tales  of  it  all.    The  past  has  churches. 


60  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

The  past  has  cathedrals.  The  past  has  noble  build- 
ings it  is  an  inspiration  to  behold.  And  this  same 
past  unfolds  its  story  in  many  a  place  it  is  a  tragedy 
to  remember.  The  voices  which  speak  from  other 
ages  are  some  of  them  splendidly  noble.  And  some 
of  them  still  vibrate  with  the  shame  of  hectic  desires 
which  burned  themselves  out  long  ago. 

Custom  is  a  monarch  who  rules  more  men  than 
ever  bent  abjectly  before  any  fiercely  powerful  ty- 
rant. And  custom  represents  the  cumulative  habits 
of  all  the  past.  Sometimes  it  is  splendidly  and  nobly 
good.  Much  of  the  finest  thinking  of  men,  and  many 
of  the  finest  characteristics  of  men  have  been  crys- 
tallized into  custom  and  so  have  been  perpetuated  in 
the  life  of  the  world.  China  has  built  its  life  about 
that  reverence  for  those  who  have  gone  before  which 
keeps  a  sunset  splendour  about  old  age  and  those  who 
have  passed  into  the  ageless  silence  of  the  dead.  The 
English-speaking  peoples  have  put  into  custom  and 
then  into  law  an  increasing  consciousness  of  the  sig- 
nificance and  the  value  of  the  individual  man  what- 
ever his  station.  In  multitudinous  ways  we  are 
guarded  and  guided  by  customs  which  are  the  out- 
growth of  old  deep  insights  into  the  meaning  and  the 
relationships  of  life.  But  it  is  not  simply  good  which 
is  preserved  by  custom.  Never  a  hoary  evil  but  keeps 
its  clutch  upon  the  minds  of  men  through  some  ven- 
erable custom  which  gives  some  sort  of  respectability 
to  a  habit  which  in  itself  would  be  frowned  out  of 
sight.  Never  an  ancient  vice  but  slyly  creeps  into  the 
life  of  men  through  some  old  way  of  life  which  leaves 
an  opening  for  its  entrance.    More  than  the  feet  of 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  6l 

Chinese  women  have  been  bound  intolerably  by  the 
bands  of  habit  which  have  come  down  through  the 
years.  Evils  which  could  be  conquered  without  much 
difficulty  get  behind  the  strength  of  long-maintained 
and  practiced  ways  and  when  we  go  to  fight  them 
we  find  that  the  soft  flesh  of  our  ideal  is  tearing  itself 
against  hard  stone.  Custom  is  a  bank  from  which  old 
evils  go  forth  for  new  circulation  as  well  as  a  reposi- 
tory of  ancient  good. 

In  all  these  ways  the  undying  wrong  of  the  past 
presses  its  ugly  way  into  contemporary  life.  In  all 
these  fashions  the  armies  of  evil  mobilize  their  forces 
and  march  in  upon  us  from  other  days. 

The  present  itself  is  full  of  evils  of  its  own.  There 
is  nothing  more  wonderful  about  the  life  of  any  age 
than  its  social  institutions.  They  represent  the  race 's 
genius  for  organization.  They  represent  the  capac- 
ity of  men  to  live  together,  to  think  together,  and  to 
work  together  for  the  great  ends  of  life.  Blot  these 
institutions  out  of  existence  and  human  life  would 
drift  back  into  anarchy.  They  form  the  steel  frame- 
work of  civilization  itself.  But  valuable  as  are  the 
social  institutions  by  which  we  live  they  are  not  an 
unmixed  good.  There  are  dark  and  evil  things  which 
become  through  their  influence  structural  in  the 
very  life  of  men.1  But  the  important  matter  from 
the  standpoint  of  our  discussion  is  that  it  was  an  or- 
ganized evil.  It  was  so  deeply  a  part  of  the  whole 
life  of  various  countries  that  serious  and  earnest  men 
were  sometimes  unable  to  see  how  life  could  go  on 

xThe  highly  articulated  traffic  in  intoxicating  liquors 
has  become  such  an  institution. 


62  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

without  it.1  Men  found  themselves  a  part  of  a  highly- 
articulated  and  thoroughly  organized  life  really  in 
large  measure  built  upon  it.  So  it  was  in  the  Athens 
of  the  fifth  century  b.  c.  And  so  it  has  been  in  many 
another  land  in  many  another  age.  The  men  born 
into  each  period  of  the  world's  life  have  found  that 
some  contemporary  institutions  poisoned  the  spirit  of 
that  age  at  its  very  source.  We  are  beginning  to  deal 
in  genuine  and  earnest  seriousness  with  the  problems 
connected  with  the  industrial  and  economic  organiza- 
tion of  the  world  to-day.  And  no  one  who  studies 
with  an  open  mind  the  present  organization  will  deny 
that  remedies  must  be  sought  and  found  for  terrible 
and  fatal  flaws  in  the  heart  of  the  system  itself.  Evil 
invades  the  world  through  many  an  institution  which 
seems  part  of  the  essential  fabric  of  civilization. 

The  present  gives  a  wide  and  constant  opportunity 
for  the  impact  of  that  evil  which  comes  from  the 
vivid  personal  magnetism  of  evil  people.  There  is 
an  ancient  story  of  a  slave  girl  who  took  poison  into 
her  system,  a  little  at  a  time,  then  a  little  more  and 
a  little  more.  At  last  her  whole  organism  became  so 
full  of  poison  that  at  her  very  breath  flowers  would 
wither.  As  a  symbol  this  old  story  is  very  significant. 
There  are  many  people  in  the  world  who  are  breath- 
ing out  poison  all  the  while.  They  contaminate  the 
atmosphere  wherever  they  are.  They  are  vigorous 
people.  They  have  red  blood  and  sturdy  strength. 
They  make  alluring  anything  to  which  they  give 
themselves.    And  they  have  given  themselves  to  evil. 

1  In  some  countries  and  in  certain  ages  slavery  has 
been  such  an  institution. 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  63 

With  a  sort  of  sweeping  magnificence  they  brush 
aside  the  ethical  distinctions  which  we  have  been 
holding  dear.  To  speak  of  right  and  wrong  in  their 
presence  seems  a  sort  of  impertinence.  And  all  the 
while  they  spread  the  contagion  of  their  own  brilliant 
essential  evil.  They  are  the  sales  agents  of  iniquity 
in  the  world. 

Life  itself  has  hard  and  cruel  ways  of  pressing 
upon  us.  The  present  day  seems  to  ask  of  us  more 
than  we  can  do.  It  seems  to  require  of  us  more  than 
we  can  be.  The  whole  complicated  matter  of  living 
brings  such  insistent  requirements  upon  us  that  we 
fairly  stagger  under  the  weight  of  it  all.  Then  there 
comes  the  dangerous  and  alluring  suggestion  of  short 
cuts.  There  may  be  no  royal  road  to  geometry.  But 
very  often  we  are  tempted  to  think  that  there  is  a 
short  cut  to  prosperity  and  success.  We  watch  the 
people  who  have  not  been  checked  by  restraints  as 
binding  as  those  which  have  held  us,  and  as  we  see 
them  far  on  in  the  race  we  are  tempted  to  feel  that 
too  great  a  regard  to  matters  of  character  is  a  lia- 
bility and  not  an  asset  in  the  tense  and  difficult  busi- 
ness of  living.  The  very  swift  and  driving  movement 
of  the  world  in  which  we  live  seems  to  rub  out  our 
sense  of  moral  distinctions  and  leave  us  with  the 
bare  and  brutal  realities  of  the  struggle  for  survival, 
for  standing  room  and  living  room  in  the  world.  To 
be  sure  there  are  quick  turns  in  experience  when  we 
come  to  know  that  life  is  on  the  side  of  goodness  and 
not  on  the  side  of  evil.  When  we  take  a  long  enough 
look  and  a  poised  enough  survey  we  know  that  the 
moral  law  is  written  in  the  very  nature  of  things. 


64  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

But  too  often  before  we  have  made  this  discovery  we 
are  all  entangled  in  ways  of  evil.  So  through  the 
past  and  the  present  wrong  invades  the  world. 

The  problem,  however,  is  even  more  complicated 
than  we  have  yet  realized.  Browning  wrote  in 
"Pauline,"  "I  seemed  myself  the  foe  from  which  I 
fled."  When  we  come  to  close  and  understanding 
contact  with  our  own  natures  we  are  dismayed  to 
find  that  there  is  a  certain  strange  capacity  to  re- 
spond to  evil  which  is  a  part  of  their  structure.  The 
very  possession  of  a  body  subjects  us  to  temptation. 
The  very  possession  of  a  mind  involves  certain  subtle 
and  difficult  experiences  of  temptation.  And  the 
delicate  organism  of  the  interior  life  of  the  spirit  has 
foes  of  its  own.  When  the  monks  of  the  Middle  Ages 
fled  away  from  the  temptations  of  the  wicked  world 
they  were  surprised  to  find  that  they  carried  their 
temptations  with  them.  They  had  merely  succeeded 
in  changing  their  form  without  altering  their  funda- 
mental significance.  To  have  a  body  and  a  mind 
means  that  sooner  or  later  the  time  will  come  when 
the  temptation  is  felt  to  put  the  lower  in  the  place  of 
the  higher. 

To  possess  a  complicated  and  involved  instrument 
for  the  seeking  and  the  finding  and  the  declaring  of 
truth  means  that  around  some  corner  of  experience 
will  come  the  suggestion  to  use  this  wonderful  instru- 
ment for  ends  lower  than  the  highest.  The  very 
throb  of  the  personal  life  with  its  sharp  self -con- 
sciousness and  its  vivid  sense  of  values  centering  in 
one  flaming  spot  of  feeling  has  as  a  part  of  its  inher- 
ent quality  the  possibility  of  misuse.    Personality  is 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  65 

capable  of  the  noblest  selflessness.  It  is  also  capable 
of  the  most  ignoble  selfishnness.  So  it  comes  to  pass 
that  involved  in  the  very  physical  and  mental  and 
personal  structure  of  human  life  are  the  most  varied 
doors  through  which  the  invading  evil  may  make  its 
way.  To  possess  a  human  organism  is  to  have  an 
amazing  instrument  for  goodness.  It  is  also  to  have 
an  amazing  instrument  for  sinning. 

An  analysis  like  this  is  likely  to  leave  the  sky  seem- 
ing to  be  very  dark.  That  there  is  darkness  involved 
no  honest  man  would  deny.  And  there  are  those  who 
are  tempted  to  say  that  that  weird  and  terrible  poem 
of  Lord  Byron, ' '  Darkness, ' '  in  which  he  describes  the 
tragedy  which  came  when  the  sun  went  out  and  all 
the  fire  in  the  world  at  last  came  to  an  end  would  be 
an  accurate  picture  of  the  situation.  We  do  not  be- 
lieve that  this  is  true.  We  believe  that  it  is  perfectly 
possible  to  do  justice  to  all  the  facts  without  being 
plunged  into  complete  misanthropy  and  pessimism. 

Here  we  must  make  a  distinction  which  is  funda- 
mental for  our  whole  discussion.  This  has  to  do  with 
the  difference  between  sin  and  evil.  All  sin  is  evil 
but  all  evil  is  not  sin.  John  Wesley  put  the  matter 
with  almost  blunt  straightforwardness  when  he  de- 
clared that  sin  is  voluntary  violation  of  known  law. 
Now  there  is  something  splendidly  fair  to  the  specific 
individual  in  such  a  definition.  But  it  is  evident 
that  it  does  not  cover  a  great  deal  of  the  wrong  in 
the  world.  A  man  gets  entangled  in  the  mesh  of 
evil  which  invades  his  life  from  the  past.  He  gets 
entangled  in  the  mesh  of  evil  which  invades  his  life 
from  the  present.     And  much  of  this  happens  with- 


66  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

out  representing  any  intention  on  his  part.  Much 
of  it  happens  without  his  realizing  that  he  is  being 
caught  in  a  net  of  evil  at  all.  Now  all  of  the  wrong 
things  which  a  man  does  as  a  result  of  heredity  and 
environment  without  realizing  that  they  are  wrong 
represent  a  most  sad  and  terrible  tragedy.  But  they 
do  not  involve  personal  responsibility.  They  do  not 
involve  guilt.  And  in  the  direct  and  close  and  per- 
sonal sense  it  is  not  fair  to  call  them  sin.  If  you  do 
call  them  sin  then  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  distinc- 
tion between  that  racial  entanglement  of  sin  for 
which  a  man  is  not  responsible,  and  the  choice  of 
wrong  in  the  clear  knowledge  that  it  is  wrong.  The 
one  may  be  called  racial  sin  and  the  other  personal 
sin  if  one  insists  upon  using  the  same  word  in  both 
cases.  But  it  seems  better  to  make  the  distinction  in 
the  form  with  which  we  began  this  paragraph,  and 
to  call  that  wrong  which  a  man  does  not  deliberately 
choose,  evil,  and  that  wrong  which  he  does  deliber- 
ately choose,  sin. 

There  are  two  practical  and  pressing  problems  in 
the  world  then.  One  has  to  do  with  that  evil  which 
follows  men  without  their  choosing  it.  The  other 
has  to  do  with  that  evil  which  they  deliberately  give 
a  place  in  their  lives.  At  the  very  outset  it  is  clear 
that  an  immense  amount  of  the  evil  in  the  world  has 
completely  lost  contact  with  a  responsible  and  de- 
liberate source.  Much  of  the  evil  which  invades  our 
lives  from  the  past  may  be  so  classified.  And  much 
of  the  evil  which  invades  our  lives  from  the  present 
answers  to  the  same  description. 

In  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  Socrates  made 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  67 

virtue  synonymous  with  knowledge,  and  vice  synony- 
mous with  ignorance.  He  believed  that  no  man 
would  ever  do  a  thing  which  he  completely  and 
thoroughly  understood  to  be  evil.  Without  stopping 
to  test  the  validity  of  this  position  for  the  moment, 
we  may  readily  admit  that  there  is  a  great  quantity 
of  evil  in  the  world  which  does  come  from  ignorance. 
There  is  a  substantial  weight  of  wrong  which  will 
vanish  before  the  light  of  knowledge.  Now  it  is  very 
clear  that  in  relation  to  all  the  forms  of  evil  which 
can  be  so  classified,  there  is  one  great  need.  That 
need  is  education.  That  need  is  knowledge.  If  a 
man  has  done  wrong  things  because  he  did  not  know 
that  they  were  wrong,  the  very  immediate  and  the 
very  practical  demand  is  that  he  shall  be  informed  in 
unmistakable  and  convincing  fashion  just  where  the 
wrong  lies. 

"When  one  thinks  of  the  pitiful  cry  which  has  gone 
up  from  multitudes  of  youths  who  have  been  caught 
in  some  coil  of  evil  habit  of  whose  meaning  and  con- 
sequences they  had  absolutely  no  knowledge  the  im- 
portance of  the  sort  of  ethical  education  of  which 
we  are  speaking  is  clearly  evident.  All  the  while 
there  is  need  for  the  most  searching  analysis  of  the 
moral  meaning  and  the  moral  results  of  the  habits 
of  life  which  characterize  the  men  and  women  who 
are  making  the  adventure  of  existence.  And  there 
is  need  that  the  results  of  this  analysis  be  put  in  the 
clearest  and  most  convincing  and  effective  form,  and 
then  that  they  be  given  the  very  widest  publicity  pos- 
sible. Then  it  is  necessary  that  those  institutions 
which  make  vice  easy  and  virtue  hard  shall  be  fought 


68  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

with  remorseless  and  relentless  antagonism.  Simply 
knowledge  is  not  enough  if  a  man  is  caught  in  a  net- 
work of  social  forces  whose  pressure  upon  him  is 
constant  and  bears  away  his  resistance  with  steady 
and  cumulative  power.  Here  the  reformers  find 
their  charter.  And  right  glorious  and  right  pro- 
ductive is  their  work. 

Before  their  attacks  many  an  entrenched  and 
powerfully  fortified  evil  has  gone  down.  Their  eyes 
are  everywhere.  They  see  the  lad  working  in  the 
mine  under  conditions  which  will  inevitably  wear 
away  his  physical  vitality  and  almost  inevitably  will 
wear  away  his  moral  powers  of  resistance.  They  see 
the  inroads  of  that  commercialized  vice  which  invests 
in  evil  and  draws  dividends  from  the  vices  which 
poison  society.  They  invade  prisons  where  the  lack 
of  exercise,  the  lack  of  sunshine,  and  the  lack  of 
fresh  air  deplete  the  bodily  vitality  and  leave  the 
victim  a  prey  to  disease  and  abnormal  vice.  They 
go  wherever  the  present  organization  of  life  makes 
robust  bodies  and  clean  minds  difficult,  and  they 
lift  their  battle  cry.  They  enter  the  factories  and 
all  the  busy  hives  of  industry  and  demand  that  every 
place  where  men  work  shall  be  a  place  without  that 
contagion  of  inevitable  physical  and  moral  evil  which 
threatens  the  very  future  of  the  race.  They  demand 
a  living  wage,  for  they  know  that  poverty  is  the 
most  successful  sort  of  breeder  of  crime.  They  are 
the  knight  errants  who  do  brave  battle  with  all  the 
entrenched  evils  in  the  world.  It  is  impossible  to 
speak  too  highly  of  their  services.  We  all  owe  more 
to  their  dauntless,  fearless  warfare  than  we  know. 


THE   INVADING  EVIL  69 

These  two  forces  of  education  and  reform  are  among 
the  mightiest  influences  working  among  us  to  make 
for  a  better  world.  And  where  the  root  of  the  evil 
is  ignorance  or  slavery  to  an  environment  so  power- 
ful that  it  chains  those  who  are  a  part  of  it,  the  work 
done  by  the  educator  and  the  reformer  is  not  only 
noble.  It  is  also  the  final  and  adequate  work  which 
is  required. 

Before  we  go  farther  let  us  admit  with  the  utmost 
and  heartiest  candour  that  if  all  the  evil  which  is 
due  to  ignorance  and  to  the  hard  pressure  of  environ- 
ment were  taken  out  of  human  life  we  would  live  in 
a  changed  world.  The  work  of  the  educator  is  often 
very  quiet.  Sometimes  it  seems  entirely  hidden. 
But  he  is  doing  more  than  we  understand  to  make 
the  world  safe  for  humanity.  He  is  doing  more  than 
we,  know  to  banish  the  dark  and  treacherous  evils 
which  infest  the  world.  Sometimes  we  grow  weary 
of  the  reformer.  Sometimes  we  wish  that  he  would 
stop  shouting  "  Wolf!  Wolf!"  perpetually  in  our 
ears.  Why  all  this  din?  Why  all  this  confusion? 
Is  there  not  some  way  to  silence  this  fanatical  shouter 
so  that  we  may  have  some  real  serenity  and  peace? 
The  reformer  usually  does  get  on  our  nerves,  before 
he  succeeds  in  getting  his  case  on  our  consciences. 
But  when  we  look  at  the  matter  in  a  large  and  honest 
way,  we  have  to  confess  that  our  irritation  was  not 
especially  creditable  either  to  our  insight  or  to  our 
serious  purpose  to  improve  the  world.  When  we  are 
most  impatient  and  when  he  seems  most  hectic  and 
full  of  unpoised  wrath  the  reformer  is  often  fighting 
our  own  battles  and  doing  a  real  piece  of  work  to- 


70  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

ward  preventing  the  world  from  becoming  a  place 
which  will  fall  down  upon  our  heads.  In  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  if  he  is  not  worn  out  by  his  passion 
and  by  our  carelessness,  we  praise  him.  After  he 
has  died  we  raise  monuments  to  him.  If  the  salt  of 
the  earth  keeps  its  savour  the  reformer  deserves  a 
large  share  of  praise. 

When  all  this  is  said  with  the  most  eager  sincerity 
it  remains  to  be  added  that  there  is  something  which 
educators  and  reformers  are  not  able  to  do.  When 
we  have  analyzed  all  the  powerful  ways  in  which 
ignorant  evil  and  the  evil  which  comes  from  the  in- 
roads of  bad  environment  have  been  fought  and  are 
being  fought  and  may  be  fought,  it  is  necessary  to 
add  that  there  is  an  evil  whose  problem  we  have  not 
yet  touched.  And  it  is  the  most  difficult  and  menac- 
ing of  all.  When  we  have  dealt  with  ignorant  evil 
we  must  face  evil  which  is  not  ignorant.  And  when 
we  have  triumphed  over  that  environment  which 
crushes  goodness  we  must  meet  that  evil  whose  source 
is  nearer  and  more  intimate  than  the  most  powerful 
pressure  from  without.  Going  back  to  the  distinc- 
tion we  made  a  little  earlier,  having  discussed  the 
fashion  in  which  it  is  possible  to  deal  with  evil,  we 
must  now  discover  what  sort  of  a  problem  it  is  we 
have  to  meet  when  we  come  to  the  matter  of  personal 
sin. 

Here  is  a  boy  who  has  been  brought  up  in  an  evil 
environment.  His  whole  personality  seems  wrapped 
about  with  the  sordid  and  ugly  things  which  have 
come  to  him  through  a  foul  heredity  and  a  loathsome 
set  of  surroundings.     For  a  long  time  all  this  has  no 


THE   INVADING  EVIL  71 

particular  relation  to  the  boy's  own  choice.  It  comes 
in  from  without  and  fairly  overwhelms  him.  But  at 
last  a  day  comes  when  he  begins  to  get  some  hint  of 
the  meaning  of  it  all.  He  gets  a  quick  flashing 
glimpse  of  his  life  as  it  looks  from  the  outside.  And 
now  a  very  extraordinary  thing  happens.  The 
moment  the  boy  gets  some  notion  of  the  sort  of  tangle 
it  is  in  which  he  finds  himself,  he  must  take  sides. 
He  may  take  sides  with  all  this  evil.  He  may  take 
sides  against  it.  But  he  must  choose.  And  in  that 
choice  he  is  master.  No  outside  force  determines 
what  he  will  do.  At  this  point  he  is  master  of  his 
fate.  At  this  point  he  is  the  captain  of  his  soul. 
He  is  not  responsible  for  the  evil  which  wraps  itself 
about  his  life.  But  the  moment  he  discovers  that 
there  is  evil  he  is  responsible  for  the  attitude  he  takes 
toward  it. 

Now,  in  such  a  situation,  he  may  turn  with  loath- 
ing from  everything  which  he  realizes  is  wrong. 
And  though  it  fights  hard  for  a  place  in  his  life  he 
may  maintain  a  constant  and  heroic  attitude  of  pro- 
test and  defiance  of  that  which  he  knows  is  evil.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  may  deliberately  ally  himself  with 
the  evil  which  he  finds  moving  through  his  life.  He 
may  choose  it.  He  may  decide  to  make  it  the  sort 
of  thing  for  which  he  seeks  and  the  sort  of  thing  for 
which  he  cares.  And  the  moment  he  decides  for  the 
evil  which  he  knows  to  be  evil  he  has  ceased  to  be  a 
victim  and  has  become  a  participant  in  personal  sin. 
Now  the  whole  ethical  situation  of  his  life  has 
changed.  There  is  a  creative  center  of  conscious 
evil  established  in  his  life.     And  that  wrong  bent  of 


72  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

his  will  deliberately  chosen  represents  a  hard  and 
cruel  fact  of  the  most  far-reaching  character. 

Education  is  useless  in  dealing  with  this  problem. 
If  you  educate  this  boy  you  simply  make  him  more 
refined  and  skillful  and  dangerous  in  his  deliberate 
evil.  The  reformer  cannot  reach  the  strategic  point 
of  difficulty  in  this  problem.  This  sort  of  boy  will 
corrupt  an  environment  as  fast  as  the  reformer 
banishes  evil  things  from  its  area.  Here  we  come 
upon  the  really  vital  matter  in  the  whole  situation 
as  regards  the  invading  evil.  The  evil  which  in- 
vades a  particular  age  through  the  doors  of  the  past 
and  through  wrong  institutions  and  through  bad 
environment  can  be  fought  with  wonderful  success 
as  long  as  it  has  not  become  a  matter  of  personal 
choice  in  the  age  where  the  battle  is  being  fought. 
But  this  is  just  what  is  happening  all  the  while. 
Men  are  establishing  personal  centers  for  the  creation 
of  evil  in  their  own  lives.  They  are  doing  this  not 
because  of  the  pressure  of  environment  or  heredity 
but  as  a  free  and  potent  personal  act.  And  this  per- 
petual creative  personal  reinforcement  of  evil  is  the 
darkest  problem  of  life.  It  is  the  real  problem  of 
personal  sin. 

When  we  look  at  the  matter  with  entire  candour 
we  discover  that  we  have  all  had  experience  in  rela- 
tion to  both  kinds  of  wrong.  We  know  the  touch  of 
that  wrong  which  does  not  represent  personal  desire 
or  will  or  purpose.  After  getting  involved  in  this 
sort  of  wrong  we  have  cried  out :  ' '  I  never  meant 
that.  I  did  not  understand  it.  I  see  now  for  the 
first  time  what  it  all  means.     If  I  had  had  more 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  73 

knowledge  or  if  I  had  had  a  better  environment  that 
wrong  would  never  have  gotten  a  place  in  my  life. ' ' 
But  we  also  have  had  experience  with  another  kind 
of  wrong.  As  we  look  back  upon  it  we  are  forced  to 
admit  that  we  knew  perfectly  well  that  it  was  wrong. 
We  were  thoroughly  aware  that  we  were  moving  out 
upon  an  evil  way.  And  we  did  not  care.  We 
wanted  the  thing.  We  decided  that  we  would  have 
it.  And  we  put  all  other  considerations  quite  out  of 
our  minds.  We  lifted  desire  to  the  place  which  be- 
longs to  duty.  We  deliberately  ignored  the  cautious 
behests  of  our  better  nature  and  with  passionate  in- 
tensity did  the  thing  we  wanted  to  do  regardless  of 
the  consequences.  In  some  part  of  our  lives  we  all 
know  what  it  is  to  be  the  victim  of  evil  which  presses 
upon  us  without  asking  our  consent.  And  in  some 
part  of  our  lives  we  all  know  what  it  is  with  our 
eyes  open  to  choose  the  thing  which  is  wrong. 

In  many  lives  this  deliberate  choice  of  wrong  be- 
comes a  potent  and  masterful  and  commanding  thing. 
The  really  vital  and  effective  part  of  the  personality 
is  its  allegiance  to  evil.  It  welcomes  evil  from  the 
past.  It  welcomes  evil  from  the  present.  It  delights 
in  following  the  evils  made  possible  through  the 
misuse  of  the  structural  relationships  of  the  body  of 
the  mind  and  of  the  will.  It  is  imperial  in  wrong.  As 
Robert  Browning  expresses  it  through  the  lips  of  one 
of  the  characters  of  "Pippa  Passes/ '  it  is  "  magnifi- 
cent in  sin."  This  giving  of  the  very  genius  of  the 
personality  to  the  conscious  following  of  evil,  this 
making  of  every  power  of  the  life  a  partner  of  the 
work  of  a  new  creative  center  of  evil  in  the  world,  is 


74  THE   PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

the  tragic  and  startling  spectacle  which  confronts 
us  when  we  look  with  absolute  candour  upon  the  facts 
of  life.  This  personal  commitment  to  evil  deliber- 
ately chosen  is  entirely  compatible  with  the  greatest 
refinement  and  the  most  exquisite  taste.  The  Italy 
of  the  Renaissance  gives  us  many  conspicuous  ex- 
amples of  noble  taste  united  to  ethical  wickedness. 
And  it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  go  far  in  our  com- 
plicated and  highly  articulated  life  to  find  the  man 
who  has  made  the  most  complete  mental  discipline 
and  the  most  fastidious  culture  the  abject  servant  of 
a  consciousless  duplicity,  the  slave  of  a  hard  and 
scornful  selfishness.  Jesus  found  it  very  much 
harder  to  deal  with  the  highly  trained  and  self-con- 
sciously superior  sinner  than  to  meet  the  needs  of 
the  outcast.  The  problem  of  the  evil  which  moves 
out  upon  the  world  invading  its  every  avenue  of  life 
from  the  personal  center  of  the  deliberate  choice  of 
wrong  is  the  fundamental  ethical  problem  of  the  ex- 
perience of  human  life. 

It  is  clearly  evident  that  the  solution  of  this  prob- 
lem requires  a  transformed  will.  It  is  clear  that  the 
dealing  with  this  tragic  phenomenon  requires  the 
transforming  of  the  center  of  deliberate  evil  choice  in 
a  personal  life  into  a  center  for  the  determined  and 
persistent  choice  of  good.  Before  this  task  reform 
and  education  stand  helpless.  They  are  splendid 
allies.  But  they  are  not  equal  to  the  main  attack. 
Can  the  adventurous  God  Himself  break  into  human 
life  in  some  such  bewilderingly  dynamic  fashion  that 
He  cuts  His  way  through  the  seared  and  irresponsive 
surface  of  the  hardened  conscience  to  some  center  of 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  75 

quickened  response?  Does  the  Christian  religion 
possess  some  commanding  secret  by  means  of  which 
an  evil  will  may  be  transformed  and  a  creative  center 
of  evil  in  a  human  life  may  be  changed  into  a 
creative  center  of  good  ?  These  questions  inevitable 
now  must  be  met  and  answered  in  the  lectures  which 
are  to  follow.  In  the  meantime  it  is  clear  that  we 
have  a  possible  approach  to  religion  through  the  deep 
and  essential  quality  of  the  ethical  need  of  men. 
There  is  a  tremendous  work  for  religion  to  do  provid- 
ing religion  is  able  to  do  it. 

We  have  travelled  a  long  and  confusing  and  per- 
plexing way  in  this  attempt  to  see  in  some  sort  of 
coherent  relationship  what  is  the  real  meaning  of  the 
human  experience  of  evil  in  the  world.  The  ques- 
tions involved  are  difficult  and  intricate  enough. 
And  of  course  there  are  many  aspects  of  the  problem 
fairly  bristling  with  the  differences  of  opinion  which 
have  characterized  the  thinking  of  earnest  men.  As 
we  come  to  the  close  of  this  lecture  let  us  apply  the 
practical  test  to  the  analysis  we  have  offered.  Let 
us  ask  ourselves  how  it  meets  the  outreach  of  a  mind 
tense  with  the  shock  of  life's  cruel  and  difficult  ex- 
periences. Let  us  ask  what  effect  it  will  have  upon 
a  mind  which  accepts  it  as  at  least  a  working  hypoth- 
esis regarding  these  things. 

Here  is  a  man  under  the  pressure  of  the  hard  days 
of  war  through  which  we  have  just  passed.  He  is 
confronted  by  a  strange  confusion  of  good  and  evil, 
of  courage  and  brutality,  of  nobility  and  shameless 
wrong.  He  is  trying  to  find  his  way  through  all  this 
tangle  of  experience  and  observation.     He  wants  to 


76  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

be  fair  to  all  the  facts.  He  wants  to  be  fair  to  all 
the  people.  And  it  seems  an  almost  hopeless  task. 
Now  if  he  sees  clearly  the  difference  between  per- 
sonal sin  and  the  racial  entanglement  of  evil,  it  will 
come  as  a  great  light  upon  his  path.  He  will  be 
able  to  be  patient  and  full  of  a  noble  charity,  with- 
out losing  moral  vigour  or  the  sharpness  of  his 
ethical  sense.  He  will  see  that  every  man  has  two 
problems.  He  will  see  that  every  nation  has  two 
problems.  The  one  has  to  do  with  unintentional  and 
ignorant  evil.  The  other  has  to  do  with  deliberate 
and  purposeful  acceptance  of  the  worst  instead  of 
the  best.  The  facts  of  contemporary  life  require 
just  such  a  distinction.  The  facts  of  his  own  life  re- 
quire just  such  a  distinction.  If  you  hold  merely  the 
view  of  ignorant,  ethical  confusion  as  accounting  for 
all  the  evil  in  the  world  you  simply  ignore  the  ugliest 
and  most  cruel  facts  of  psychology. 

If  Socrates  could  have  made  as  careful  a  study  of 
the  will  as  he  made  of  the  processes  of  the  mind  he 
would  never  have  fallen  into  the  confusion  of  making 
all  evil  synonymous  with  ignorance.  The  soldier 
knows  that  there  is  an  evil  in  the  world  which  you 
can  never  account  for  merely  in  the  terms  of  a  con- 
fused mind.  He  also  knows  perfectly  well  that  there 
are  evils  in  the  world  for  which  you  can  account  in 
just  that  way.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  view  all 
wrong  as  the  result  of  direct  and  conscious  intent  on 
the  part  of  the  people  in  whose  lives  the  wrong  has 
appeared  you  are  doing  an  injustice  to  no  end  of 
people  in  the  most  manifold  relations.  There  is 
ignorant  wrong-doing.     There  is  intentional  wrong- 


THE  INVADING  EVIL  77 

doing.  And  you  must  include  them  both  in  any  in- 
terpretation which  is  to  do  justice  to  the  facts.  In 
the  light  of  both  the  man  who  has  been  under  the 
stress  of  these  stern  days  feels  that  he  can  find  his 
way  feeling  the  full  pressure  of  the  moral  demand 
that  he  shall  follow  the  highest  he  can  know  and  be- 
ing sure  that  there  is  a  fair  play  in  the  universe 
which  will  distinguish  between  the  deliberate  wrong 
and  the  confused  and  ignorant  participation  in  evil. 
The  various  aspects  of  ethical  experience  can  all  be 
treated  with  honest  directness  on  the  basis  of  such  a 
thought  about  the  wrong  which  is  in  the  world. 

For  the  man  who  goes  forth  to  the  tasks  of  life  with 
such  a  view  of  evil  as  we  have  outlined,  there  is  pre- 
served a  sharp  sense  of  the  nature  of  things  in  their 
own  relations  as  good  and  evil,  quite  apart  from  the 
appraisal  of  the  mind  which  comes  into  contact  with 
them.  Because  this  is  true  an  earnest  man  will  de- 
sire by  the  most  complete  and  adequate  methods  of 
education  to  sharpen  and  clarify  his  knowledge  of 
what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong.  Because  so  much 
ignorant  evil  is  entangled  in  the  structure  of  the 
world  and  so  many  people  are  innocently  caught  in 
the  evil  of  bad  institutions  he  will  be  eager  to  do  all 
he  can  to  further  the  cause  of  legitimate  reform. 
He  will  be  glad  to  fight  under  any  banner  which 
leads  against  the  entrenched  evils  in  the  world.  And 
all  the  while  he  will  know  that  a  changed  environ- 
ment does  not  mean  the  solution  of  the  deepest  hu- 
man problem.  He  will  remember,  with  solemn  seri- 
ousness, that  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  form  a  center 
of  creative  evil  in  his  own  life.    He  will  know  that 


78  THE  PRODUCTIVE  "BELIEFS 

the  will  bent  to  deliberate  wrong  represents  the  real 
and  central  problem  of  the  world.  He  will  remorse- 
lessly study  his  own  life  that  he  may  discover  and 
root  out  this  profoundest  seed  of  evil.  He  will  live 
and  work  and  fight  in  the  light  of  a  full  and  frank 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  that  devastating  personal 
evil,  that  conscious  choice  of  wrong,  which  is  the 
remorseless  foe  of  all  that  makes  for  the  good  of  the 
human  race.  He  will  realize  that  with  all  the  igno- 
rant wrong-doing  among  men  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  the  citadel  is  never  entered  until  a  man  con- 
sciously unlocks  the  door  from  within.  It  is  this 
surrender  he  fears.  It  is  this  surrender  he  hates. 
It  is  this  surrender  he  fights  against  with  all  his 
force. 

Gilbert  K.  Chesterton  somewhere  refers  in  his 
audacious  way  to  "that  blessed  doctrine  of  original 
sin."  We  would  not  for  a  moment  claim  such  a 
benediction  for  the  view  we  have  been  discussing. 
There  is  a  sense  in  which  any  interpretation  of  evil 
must  be  dolorous  and  painful  reading  if  one  is  at  all 
honest  in  dealing  with  the  facts.  But  there  is  also 
a  notable  sense  in  which  one  can  go  forth  to  meet 
life 's  testing  demands  with  a  clearer  eye  and  a  surer 
courage  when  one  has  looked  frankly  and  definitely 
into  the  very  nature  of  that  wrong  with  which  we 
have  to  contend.  In  this  fashion  at  least  we  dare  to 
believe  that  there  is  a  gleam  of  light  shining  upon 
us  as  we  close  this  discussion.  After  all  a  correct 
diagnosis  is  the  first  step  on  the  road  to  a  cure. 


LECTURE  III 
THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY 


LECTURE  III 

THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY 

IF  a  man  is  to  know  other  people  he  must  begin 
by  knowing  himself.  We  only  understand  the 
experience  of  other  people  through  experiences 
of  our  own.  The  mind  does  not  offer  a  blank  surface 
upon  which  new  experiences  are  written.  It  comes 
to  new  experiences  and  new  ideas  and  new  relation- 
ships with  a  cluster  of  memories  through  which  these 
are  interpreted.  It  is  only  by  means  of  intellectual 
and  emotional  and  ethical  sympathy  that  we  ever 
come  to  understand  anything  or  anybody.  And  in 
the  last  analysis  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  we  can 
never  understand  a  person  whom  we  do  not  love. 
The  insight  of  devotion  makes  a  thousand  things 
plain  and  clear  which  otherwise  would  be  beyond  the 
reach  of  our  understanding.  There  are  some  people 
whom  we  can  only  understand  as  we  approach  them 
with  the  memory  of  the  deepest  sort  of  ethical  and 
spiritual  struggle  in  our  own  lives.  If  our  lives  are 
superficial  in  these  things  the  lives  of  the  men  and 
women  of  mighty  moral  and  spiritual  intensity  seem 
overwrought.  From  our  lower  level  of  living  we 
wonder  why  they  are  so  torn  and  tortured  by  things 
in  their  lives  which  we  take  for  granted  with  a  shrug 
in  our  own.     It  is  only  when  we  are  willing  to  get 

81 


82  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

into  the  greatest  sort  of  moral  fight  that  we  can  un- 
derstand the  ethical  heroes  of  the  world. 

All  this  has  particular  significance  in  respect  of 
the  portrait  of  Christ  which  is  painted  in  the  Gos- 
pels. Of  course  no  one  can  really  see  it  without 
being  moved  by  it.  When  Jesus  walked  the  earth 
no  man  ever  met  Him  and  was  quite  the  same  man 
again.  There  was  a  summons  and  a  challenge  to 
which  he  had  to  take  an  attitude.  If  he  opened  his 
life  to  the  impression  he  became  a  better  man.  If 
he  closed  his  life  to  the  impression  he  became  a  worse 
man.  This  same  gift  of  seizure  is  in  the  Gospels. 
When  a  man  actually  reads  them  with  the  eyes  of  his 
mind  open  he  feels  a  demand  and  an  outreach  toward 
his  own  life.  Instinctively  he  opens  his  mind  more 
widely  or  closes  it  more  tightly.  There  is  a  call  for 
decision  lurking  in  the  background  of  every  page  of 
the  Gospels.  But  while  all  this  is  true  it  is  also  true 
that  if  a  man  would  really  come  to  some  profound 
and  understanding  relation  to  the  Figure  moving  so 
majestically  through  the  Gospels,  he  must  come  from 
some  deep  and  intimate  contact  with  his  own  life's 
problem,  he  must  come  with  the  wounds  of  his  own 
moral  fight  fresh  upon  him,  and  he  must  allow  his 
own  struggle  to  interpret  for  him  what  he  sees  as 
the  great  Master  walks  before  his  eyes. 

The  notion  that  any  man  anywhere  and  in  any 
condition  of  mind  can  understand  the  potent  and 
mysterious  personality  of  whom  the  Gospels  tell  is  a 
piece  of  intellectual  and  ethical  confusion.  There 
is  something  about  that  face  which  may  well  arrest  a 
man   anywhere.    There   is   something   about   those 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  83 

words  which  may  well  echo  and  reecho  in  the  most 
careless  heart.  But  the  insight  which  reaches  the 
place  of  understanding  is  the  insight  which  comes 
from  a  life  drawn  by  struggle  and  a  heart  which  has 
been  pressed  upon  heavily  by  pain.  A  man  does  not 
have  to  bring  goodness  to  the  Gospels  in  order  to 
understand  them.  He  does  have  to  bring  the  love  of 
goodness.  A  man  does  not  have  to  bring  high  moral 
attainment  to  the  Master  in  order  truly  to  apprehend 
Him.  He  does  have  to  bring  the  outreach  of  a 
hungry  life.  He  does  need  to  bring  the  painful  in- 
sight of  moral  battle.  He  does  need  to  bring  that 
sad  candour  which  comes  from  a  close  and  honest 
facing  of  the  meaning  of  his  moral  defeat. 

* '  I  see  the  ideal  all  the  time.  But  I  simply  cannot 
realize  it,"  cried  a  great  thinker.  It  is  this  passion- 
ate longing  for  the  distant  and  summoning  ideal. 
It  is  this  wistful  pain  in  the  consciousness  of  defeat. 
It  is  this  tragic  pull  of  an  unrealized  aspiration  which 
will  enable  a  man  to  approach  the  Gospel  figure  in 
such  a  fashion  as  to  sense  his  real  meaning  for  the 
life  of  the  world.  The  man  who  has  been  brave 
enough  to  face  the  meaning  of  his  own  defeat  is  ready 
to  see  the  meaning  of  the  victory  of  Jesus. 

For  this  is  just  the  profound  and  ineffaceable  im- 
pression which  the  Christ  of  the  Gospels  makes  upon 
you.  When  you  approach  the  figure  which  masters 
the  New  Testament  with  your  own  life  tense  with 
the  sense  of  struggle  and  heavy  with  the  sense  of 
failure,  you  feel  at  once  that  this  life  faced  the  same 
problems.  There  are  the  same  elements  of  pressure, 
the  same  weights  of  evil  circumstance,  and  yet  here 


84  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

you  find  no  sense  of  failure,  but  simply  a  wonderful 
quality  of  achievement.  All  that  triumph  in  life 
which  we  do  not  know  how  to  secure  Jesus  wrested 
from  hostile  circumstance.  When  we  come  to  analyze 
our  own  lives  we  find  that  one  of  the  deepest  sources 
of  pained  and  unhappy  discontent  is  our  utter  in- 
capacity to  harmonize  the  forces  of  our  own  inner 
life.  Victor  Hugo  wrote:  "  I  feel  two  natures 
struggling  within  me."  We  really  wish  the  prob- 
lem could  be  as  simple  as  that.  We  feel  about  a 
hundred  different  natures  struggling  within  us. 
Matthew  Arnold  was  feeling  this  problem  when  he 
wrote  of  the  men  of  the  nineteenth  century,  "of 
whom  each  strives,  nor  knows  for  what  he  strives. 
And  each  half  lives  a  hundred  different  lives.' '  So 
many  voices  are  all  the  while  calling  us  from  within. 
So  many  forces  are  making  themselves  articulate  in 
our  inner  life.  We  feel  like  a  great  ship  with  plenty 
of  sailors  and  plenty  of  passengers,  but  with  no  cap- 
tain. Each  of  the  sailors  has  a  will  of  his  own. 
They  keep  doing  things  which  do  not  fit  together. 
They  keep  doing  things  which  contradict  each  other. 
We  have  plenty  of  wills  but  no  will. 

Our  lives  represent  a  wonderful  collection  of  un- 
classified materials.  They  represent  a  mighty  as- 
sembling of  undisciplined  and  unmastered  forces. 
All  our  outer  difficulties  pale  before  this  sense  of 
inner  futility.  We  would  like  to  come  each  of  us  to 
be  the  secure  and  masterful  captain  of  his  own  soul. 
But  that  is  just  what  we  are  unable  to  do.  We 
cannot  unify  the  forces  of  our  own  life  and  mould 
them  into  harmonious  expression.     And  when  from 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  85 

this  analysis  we  look  at  the  practical  functioning  of 
the  personality  of  Jesus  as  it  shows  itself  in  the  Gos- 
pels we  discover  that  this  very  thing  which  we  so 
long  to  do  and  which  we  find  it  so  impossible  to  do, 
is  exactly  the  thing  which  He  did.  All  the  while  He 
gives  you  the  sense  that  He  is  the  captain  of  His  own 
soul.  Every  force  of  His  life  is  at  the  command  of 
His  own  high  spirit.  He  is  free  from  inner  anarchy. 
He  holds  the  reins  of  government  securely  in  His 
hands.  There  is  the  most  perfect  play  of  all  the 
energies  of  His  inner  life,  every  one  moving  in  har- 
monious expression  of  the  deep  mastering  purpose 
of  His  life.  With  sad  and  wistful  eyes  we  look  upon 
this  spectacle  of  inner  harmony  moving  out  with  sure 
and  easy  strength  in  noble  and  unselfish  deeds. 

As  we  think  about  it  all  with  closer  and  more 
definite  scrutiny,  we  make  some  important  dis- 
coveries about  the  poise  of  Jesus.  There  is  a  poise 
which  is  the  poise  of  indifference.  There  is  a  quiet 
which  is  the  stillness  of  worn-out  passion.  There  is 
a  steadiness  which  comes  from  being  irresponsive  to 
the  summons  and  the  allurement  of  life.  Very 
quickly  we  come  to  understand  that  this  is  not  the 
poise  of  Jesus.  He  did  not  feel  less  than  other  men. 
He  felt  more  than  other  men.  He  exposed  a  larger 
area  of  sensitive  responsive  surface  to  the  impression 
which  life  makes  than  did  any  other  man.  He  was 
a  sort  of  human  ajolian  harp  through  which  every 
wind  of  life  blew.  And  there  was  a  response  from 
the  instrument  for  every  gentle  zephyr  and  for  the 
fierce  driving  tempest.  He  did  not  save  Himself 
from  life.     He  met  the  full  impact  of  the  whole  ex- 


86  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

perience.  And  His  own  spirit  was  wonderfully  in- 
tense and  masterful.  He  cared  deeply.  He  loved 
deeply.  His  quiet  was  the  stillness  and  the  steadi- 
ness of  integrated  passions.  It  was  not  the  poise 
of  integrated  indifferences.  He  possessed  to  the  full 
the  artistic  temperament.  And  that  meant  that 
every  summons  of  life  spoke  to  Him  with  unusual  ap- 
peal. All  this  glowing  energy  of  vivid  response  He 
unified  and  mastered  so  that  it  became  the  still 
strength  of  a  great  vitality.  His  stillness  was  never 
the  stillness  of  death. 

In  this  fashion  He  made  perfection  itself  a  new  sort 
of  experience.  Quite  too  often  men  have  thought  of 
the  ideal  life  in  a  merely  negative  way.  Perfection 
has  meant  freedom  from  sin,  and  nothing  more. 
Jesus  Himself  dealt  with  this  conception  with  biting 
irony  in  His  little  parable  of  the  man  with  an  empty 
life.  He  was  free  from  the  devil  which  had  pos- 
sessed him.  But  that  was  all.  No  good  had  come 
in  to  take  the  place  of  the  evil.  He  was  empty. 
And  at  last  a  whole  group  of  devils  rejoicing  in  find- 
ing so  inviting  a  home  took  complete  possession  of 
him.  The  stainless  life  of  Jesus  at  once  became  a 
positive  and  potent  thing.  He  had  cast  out  evil 
passion  through  the  presence  of  good  passion.  His 
life  is  amazingly  and  bewilderingly  full.  He  never 
gives  you  the  sense  of  the  cold  correctness  of  un- 
kindled  and  unawakened  precision.  All  the  richness 
arid  surging  energy  in  life  which  men  have  sought  by 
sinning  He  sought  and  found  by  refusing  to  sin. 

For  just  at  this  point  we  come  upon  a  matter  of 
the  most   fundamental   moment.     His  stainlessness 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  87 

was  the  result  of  bat  tie.  It  was  not  something  which 
came  as  a  matter  of  course.  His  perfection  was  the 
hard  and  difficult  victory  of  one  beset  by  a  multitude 
of  ceaselessly  vigilant  foes.  He  felt  the  whole  out- 
reach of  temptation.  He  was  not  merely  tempted  as 
we  are.  He  was  tempted  more  than  we  are.  He 
exposed  a  finer  and  more  responsive  organism  to  the 
appeal  of  temptation  than  has  any  other  man  in  all 
the  world.  As  we  move  into  our  own  way  of  lonely 
struggle  there  comes  to  us  a  strange  sense  of  near 
and  understanding  sympathy  as  we  realize  that  He 
travelled  along  all  that  dark  and  difficult  way  and 
that  He  moved  through  terrible  and  winding  paths  of 
tense  and  testing  struggle  which  we  will  never  know. 
To  Jesus  Himself  it  was  a  matter  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance that  His  disciples  should  realize  His  oneness 
with  them  in  feeling  the  subtle  and  alluring  calls  to 
which  a  man  must  not  surrender.  And  so  it  came 
to  pass  that  He  told  them  the  story  of  His  experi- 
ence of  temptation  phrasing  His  narrative  in  a  vivid 
and  telling  imagery  which  carried  His  story  home 
to  their  hearts.  He  had  been  meeting  destiny  where 
the  great  souls  of  the  world  have  always  met  it — in 
struggle  alone. 

Most  men  meet  life's  concrete  times  of  crisis  with- 
out preparation  and  themselves  feel  like  half-amazed 
spectators  at  some  of  the  things  which  happen.  The 
great  men  of  the  spirit  fight  their  supreme  fights  in 
the  silent  places  of  their  own  life,  and  so  the  outer 
time  of  testing  finds  them  ready.  Jesus  had  spent 
days  and  days  and  days  in  the  lonely  propelling  of 
His  thought  into  the  future  and  the  meeting  of  the 


88  THE  PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

significance  of  His  mission.  His  body  carried  along 
on  the  high  enthusiasm  of  His  spiritual  exaltation 
and  swept  into  the  splendour  of  His  high  vision  did 
not  at  first  feel  the  need  of  food.  But  at  last  the 
inevitable  hour  of  reaction  came.  Days  of  fasting 
had  left  their  mark  upon  Him.  And  He  looked 
about  in  sharp  and  cutting  consciousness  that  He 
hungered.  His  body  seemed  organized  into  one  in- 
tense and  mastering  cry  for  food.  His  whole 
physical  nature  rose  up  in  wrath  at  the  long  days 
of  abstinence.  Such  concentrated  physical  desire 
as  most  men  have  never  known  swept  over  Him  wave 
upon  wave.  It  seemed  as  if  nothing  in  the  world 
was  so  significant  as  hunger.  It  seemed  as  if  noth- 
ing in  the  world  was  so  desirable  as  food.  But  He 
was  alone  in  the  desert.  There  were  stones  all 
about  Him.  But  there  was  no  bread.  Then  in  a 
quick  and  decisive  flash,  came  a  potent  thought. 
Strange  powers  lurked  in  His  personality.  Na- 
ture itself  would  be  His  servant.  Let  Him  send 
forth  one  commanding  word  and  change  these  hard 
stones  into  bread  which  could  satisfy  His  hunger. 
At  the  very  thought  He  could  see  the  stones  re- 
placed by  the  bread  for  which  He  longed.  But  an- 
other thought  came  to  Him.  He  was  to  be  the  master 
of  the  body  and  not  its  slave.  He  was  to  conquer 
physical  desire.  He  was  not  to  surrender  to  it. 
All  down  the  long  and  weary  years  men  had  sold 
their  character  at  the  command  of  the  body.  He  was 
to  show  them  a  better  way.  And  His  power  when 
it  was  used  was  to  be  used  for  others  and  not  for 
Himself.     For  other  men  He  could  flame  forth  a 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  89 

fiery  energy  which  nature  swiftly  obeyed.  But  for 
Himself  He  must  meet  life  as  other  men  met  it.  He 
must  not  claim  resources  which  they  could  not 
possess.  All  the  while  the  voice  of  the  body  was 
calling.  All  the  while  the  passion  of  hunger  was 
pulsing  madly  in  His  breast.  All  the  while  every 
voice  of  physical  need  was  crying  out  for  food. 
Resolutely  He  put  the  temptation  aside.  God's 
righteous  will  is  food  for  the  soul,  and  food  for  the 
body  is  not  to  be  compared  with  that.  Not  by  bread 
alone  but  by  God 's  will  would  He  live.  And  so  with 
imperial  strength  He  turned  from  all  the  surging 
outcry  of  His  hungry  body.  He  proved  Himself 
stronger  than  physical  desire. 

The  mind  itself  may  be  a  source  of  the  most  deadly 
temptations.  And  the  more  active  and  full  of  re- 
silient responsiveness  a  mind  is,  the  more  dangerous 
will  be  the  temptations  of  which  it  is  the  vehicle. 
Jesus  possessed  a  mind  whose  quick  play  and  won- 
derful penetration  amazed  all  who  knew  Him.  And 
its  activity  was  accompanied  by  a  brightly  winged 
imagination  which  turned  into  pictures  His  clear 
and  telling  thoughts.  With  this  equipment  He  had 
been  thinking  over  His  mission.  He  was  God's 
messenger  to  the  world.  He  was  the  coming  one 
who  was  to  do  for  men  that  which  most  needed  to  be 
done.  He  was  to  set  up  the  reign  of  God  in  the 
world  which  God  had  made.  But  how  was  it  to  be 
done?  There  was  vast  evil  in  the  world.  There 
were  powers  of  darkness  which  must  be  overthrown. 
How  could  He  establish  the  perfect  reign  in  an  im- 
perfect world? 


90  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

Like  a  great  panorama  a  splendid  picture  swept 
before  Him.  He  was  another  Alexander  and  the 
world  was  at  His  feet.  Flashing  swords  were  un- 
sheathed from  the  scabbard  at  His  command  and 
evil  was  conquered.  He  knew  that  He  possessed 
powers  which  could  organize  an  irresistible  force  to 
move  upon  any  foe.  He  knew  that  He  possessed 
personal  qualities  which  could  capture  and  hold  a 
position  of  command.  Alexander  had  conquered 
the  world  for  himself.  Why  should  not  the  one  who 
wras  to  set  up  God's  kingdom  capture  the  world  for 
righteousness  f  He  saw  in  vision  the  high  towers  of 
His  world  ruling  capital.  He  saw  in  vision  a  world 
organized  to  do  His  righteous  will.  It  was  a  fair 
dream,  and  it  glowed  with  infinite  allurement  before 
His  mind.  But  deep  in  His  heart  there  stirred  a 
vague  unrest.  Then  it  became  a  clear  and  dominant 
thought.  There  would  come  a  day  when  the  world 
would  be  given  new  laws.  There  would  come  a  day 
of  world-wide  organization  about  the  principles  which 
He  would  proclaim.  But  that  Avas  not  His  work. 
He  had  to  do  something  deeper.  He  had  to  do  some- 
thing harder.  A  world-wide  victory  based  upon  the 
external  surrender  of  unmastered  hearts  could  never 
satisfy  him.  Men  had  to  be  made  over  on  the  inside 
before  the  world  could  be  made  over  on  the  outside. 
The  citadel  of  the  evil  will  in  the  individual  life  must 
be  captured  before  the  endeavour  to  capture  the  ex- 
ternal citadels  of  dominant  evil  in  the  world.  Men 's 
souls  must  be  won  before  it  became  a  profoundly 
significant  thing  to  capture  their  bodies.  And  the 
one  who  did  this  deepest  thing  must  do  it  by  shedding 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  91 

his  own  blood  rather  than  by  shedding  the  blood  of 
others.  You  can  overthrow  a  civilization  with  an 
army.  You  can  only  overthrow  a  heart  by  self- 
sacrifice. 

So  another  picture  unfolded  before  His  eyes.  This 
picture  revealed  a  lonely  sufferer  paying  the  last 
price  of  hard  and  costly  suffering  to  break  his  way 
into  the  hearts  of  men.  It  revealed  a  life  baring  its 
heart  to  the  lightnings  in  order  that  love  and 
righteousness  and  all  the  deep  and  holy  things  might 
come  to  full  and  mastering  expression  in  the  world. 
Strange  and  mysterious  secrets  of  those  realities 
having  to  do  with  the  most  sacred  and  far-reaching 
personal  experiences  were  in  the  eyes  of  this  suffer- 
ing figure.  He  was  alone.  But  he  staggered  on 
bearing  the  moral  and  spiritual  future  of  the  world. 
Jesus  did  not  hesitate.  He  cast  out  of  His  mind  the 
figure  of  the  conquering  hero.  He  opened  His  mind 
to  the  figure  of  the  suffering  servant.  The  mind  had 
done  its  best  to  tempt  Him.  He  refused  to  bend  in 
worship  before  that  picture  of  external  glory.  He 
committed  Himself  to  the  invisible  realities  of  the 
spirit.     He  surrendered  His  life  to  the  way  of  pain. 

Through  all  the  tenseness  and  pressure  of  the  con- 
flict His  nerves  had  held  steady.  Now  it  seemed  as 
if  they  were  ready  to  snap.  With  a  sudden  inrush 
of  tremendous  power  His  overwrought  nerves  began 
to  cry  aloud.  Something  of  that  conflict  most  of  the 
highly  organized  and  sensitively  responsive  natures 
of  the  world  have  known.  But  the  full  tragedy  of  it 
all  suddenly  came  to  Jesus.  And  with  the  release 
of  the  pain  of  mutinous  nerves  came  that  which  ac- 


92  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

companies  the  experience  in  so  deadly  a  way.  He 
seemed  about  to  lose  grip  upon  Himself.  The  wall 
between  the  steady  and  the  abnormal,  between  the 
sane  and  the  wild,  mad  thought  suddenly  became 
very  thin.  In  a  flash  it  seemed  that  Jesus  was  on 
the  pinnacle  of  the  temple.  He  was  accosted  by  an 
abnormal  thought.  Why  not  put  His  Messiahship 
to  the  test  %  Why  not  leap  from  the  pinnacle  of  the 
temple  and  let  an  angel  catch  Him  ere  He  fell  to  the 
ground?  That  would  indeed  validate  His  mighty 
office.  He  stood  quivering  on  the  edge  of  the  com- 
plete disruption  of  His  faculties  in  an  anarchy  of 
mad  nerves.  And  in  that  hour  of  strange  temptation 
to  submit  to  the  call  of  the  abnormal  He  did  not 
falter.  He  walked  with  complete  steadiness  among 
the  live  wires  of  His  madly  rebellious  nerves.  He 
quelled  them  into  silence.  He  steadied  them  into 
quiet.  He  was  master  in  the  very  hour  when  it 
seemed  that  reason  itself  might  be  tottering  under 
the  strain  of  His  days  of  conflict.  He  was  spent  and 
weary.     But  he  had  conquered. 

These  typical  temptations  do  not  exhaust  the  ex- 
perience of  Jesus  with  ethical  conflict.  His  whole 
life  had  its  tale  of  battle  and  its  story  of  victory. 
The  very  quality  of  His  personality  and  the  very 
nature  of  His  work  shut  Him  out  from  some  things 
which  are  open  to  other  men.  And  the  heartiness  of 
His  response  to  all  human  experience  and  His  eager- 
ness about  all  genuine  and  wholesome  human  rela- 
tionships made  Him  especially  open  to  the  signifi- 
cance of  those  aspects  of  experience  which  were  de- 
nied to  Him.    With  all  His  winged  idealism  He  had  a 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  93 

shrewd  practical  sense  of  values.  Sir  William  Rob- 
ertson Nicoll  has  called  attention  to  the  frequency 
with  which  He  discussed  matters  connected  with 
money.  But  His  own  life  by  the  very  definition  of 
its  meaning  for  the  world  had  no  place  for  those 
honest  and  skillful  activities  which  mean  so  much  to 
the  wise  and  prudent  man.  It  was  always  an  ad- 
venture of  friendly  teaching  which  never  built  a 
place  for  itself  in  the  structure  of  contemporary 
society.  How  keenly  Jesus  Himself  felt  this  is 
shown  in  His  poignant  words:  "Foxes  have  holes 
and  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests,  but  the  Son  of 
Man  hath  no  place  to  lay  his  head."  As  men  gave 
back  hate  for  His  love,  and  as  the  sky  grew  dark 
about  Him  with  approaching  storm  the  strain  of 
pain  and  temptation  grew  greater.  And  when  He 
retreated  to  some  quiet  place  with  His  own  dis- 
ciples in  order  to  escape  the  hatred  which  dogged  His 
steps  and  followed  every  word  and  every  deed  in 
order  to  criticize  Him,  even  in  the  friendly  seclusion 
with  His  chosen  disciples,  He  heard  the  hiss  of  the 
serpent.  He  became  increasingly  aware  that  one  of 
His  own  disciples  was  untrue  to  Him  and  had  a 
selfish,  angry,  hating  heart  back  of  his  smooth  and 
plausible  tongue  and  his  hearty,  friendly  eyes. 

What  it  cost  Jesus  to  live  with  this  poison  of  false- 
ness among  His  own  disciples  none  of  us  can  really 
apprehend.  The  whole  atmosphere  was  clouded  by 
the  presence  of  this  one  man.  But  patiently  and 
tenderly  and  with  quiet  strong  dignity  Jesus  en- 
dured it  all.  As  the  struggle  grew  more  intense 
some  inner  spiritual  energy  grew  more  and  more 


94  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

compelling.  He  did  not  fail.  In  the  garden  of 
Gethsemane  you  stand  reverently  near  with  covered 
face  as  the  fiery  trial  of  temptation  becomes  almost 
more  than  nature  can  endure.  And  on  the  Cross 
itself  you  know  that  the  spiritual  conflict  is  a  more 
terrible  thing  than  the  physical  agony.  Only  with 
the  triumphant  shout:  "It  is  finished,"  is  the 
temptation  over,  is  the  final  victory  won.  The  gar- 
ment of  His  perfection  is  cleansed  and  brightened 
by  tears  and  its  richest  colour  glows  with  the  red  of 
blood.  So  out  of  titanic  struggle  did  He  achieve 
that  glowing,  winsome,  perfectly  attractive  life 
which  has  captured  the  mind  and  the  conscience  and 
the  imagination  of  men. 

The  words  of  Jesus  are  themselves  a  part  of  His 
life.  With  many  men  the  life  of  speech  and  the  life 
of  activity  are  in  hopeless  conflict.  But  what  He 
was  came  forth  in  splendid  and  adequate  utterance 
in  living  words.  His  speech  came  from  immediate 
insight  and  not  from  a  process  of  dialectic.  It  was 
proclamation  and  not  argument.  It  was  the  ex- 
pression of  insight  and  not  a  product  of  formal 
logic.  It  came  out  of  life  and  it  appealed  to  life. 
It  came  out  of  the  very  structural  relationships  and 
experiences  of  men  and  out  of  their  most  character- 
istic activities.  This  made  it  universally  compre- 
hensible. And  this  accounts  in  part  for  its  universal 
appeal.  Life  itself  becomes  articulate  in  His  speech. 
All  this  is  accentuated  by  His  habit  of  speaking  from 
the  eye  and  to  the  eye.  It  is  remarkable  how  much 
of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  consists  of  the  painting  of 
verbal  pictures.     You  look  at  the  picture  and  you 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  95 

see  it  in  all  its  bright,  clear  colours.  Then  right  out 
of  the  picture  there  leaps  a  flaming  truth  which 
grasps  your  mind  and  commands  your  conscience 
and  wins  your  heart.  The  parables  come  out  of  this 
same  fundamentally  vital  attitude.  A  story  is  the 
nearest  approach  to  life  itself  by  means  of  words. 
And  that  is  the  reason  why  Jesus  told  so  many 
stories.  He  was  not  interested  in  truth  apart  from 
living  relationships,  if  there  is  any  such  thing  as 
truth  apart  from  living  relationships.  He  was  in- 
terested in  truth  as  it  looked  out  of  men's  eyes,  as  it 
glowed  in  their  hearts,  as  it  thrilled  in  their  speech, 
as  it  dominated  their  activities.  A  generalization 
can  give  you  the  form  of  a  truth.  A  parable  can  give 
you  a  truth  in  action.  By  means  of  the  parables,  too, 
Jesus  made  ethical  and  spiritual  truth  a  very  near 
and  intimate  thing. 

There  is  always  the  danger  that  men  will  hear  the 
exposition  of  truths  with  a  great  deal  of  respect,  but 
that  it  will  never  occur  to  them  to  apply  these  truths 
to  their  lives.  It  was  hardly  possible  to  treat  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  in  this  fashion.  Standing  near  a 
field  where  He  could  see  a  farmer  planting  seed,  He 
talked  of  the  kinds  of  ground  until  every  hearer  was 
forced  to  ask  what  kind  of  soil  He  was  offering  to  the 
truth.  In  the  presence  of  eager  youths  and  maidens 
He  spoke  of  the  bridal  feast  and  those  who  were 
ready  for  the  glad  festivities.  In  the  presence  of 
busy  women  He  spoke  of  the  thrifty  housewife  who 
searched  for  a  lost  coin  until  she  found  it,  or  of  the 
behaviour  of  the  yeast  when  it  was  put  in  the  meal. 
In  the  presence  of  men  who  knew  the  perils  of  travel 


96  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

He  talked  of  an  unfortunate  man  who  fell  among 
thieves  and  of  the  way  in  which  other  travellers 
treated  him.  In  the  presence  of  men  who  knew  what 
it  was  to  care  for  sheep  He  spoke  with  trembling, 
eager  voice  of  a  shepherd  who  ran  risks  to  save  his 
sheep.  And  in  the  presence  of  fathers  and  sons  He 
told  a  tale  of  a  wonderful  father  which  seemed  to  let 
a  new  meaning  into  all  of  life.  And  all  of  these 
stories  came  out  of  His  intimate  relation  to  life,  His 
quiet,  constant  observation,  the  insight  which  came 
from  struggle  and  suffering  and  victory,  and  the 
love  for  people  which  desired  to  give  to  them  the  very 
best  which  He  possessed.  His  teaching  is  a  part  of 
the  very  fabric  of  His  life. 

The  wonderful  deeds  of  Jesus  must  be  seen  as  a 
part  of  the  complete  organism  of  His  life.  There 
was  a  time  when  there  were  people  who  believed  in 
Jesus  because  they  believed  in  His  miracles.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  the  typical  modern  mind  approaches 
His  amazing  deeds  through  the  preliminary  impres- 
sion made  by  His  character  and  His  teaching.  His 
power  is  a  corollary  of  His  character.  His  tran- 
scendent activities  are  the  by-products  of  that  per- 
sonal supremacy  which  makes  it  possible  for  that  to 
seem  simple  and  real  in  Him  which  would  be  impos- 
sible in  other  men.  To  be  sure  at  this  point  we  are  on 
the  edge  of  many  puzzling  and  baffling  questions. 
Our  whole  conception  of  the  functioning  activities 
of  the  natural  order  and  of  the  splendidly  depend- 
able uniformities  of  nature  demand  consideration. 
It  is  at  least  possible  to  say  here  as  much  as  this. 
If  the  universe  is  merely  a  system  of  hard  and  fast 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  97 

mechanical  interactions  there  is  no  room  for  any 
real  personality,  and  no  room  for  any  actual  ethical 
experience.  If  we  believe  in  a  personal  world  at  all 
the  mathematical  world  of  hard  and  fast  interactions 
is  a  part  of  a  totality  which  includes  all  the  free  and 
ranging  personal  experiences.  The  manner  in 
which  the  personal  and  impersonal  aspects  of  ex- 
perience are  related  is  of  course  beyond  the  range  of 
our  immediate  discussion.  But  it  is  clear  that  if  we 
have  a  God  at  all  He  must  not  be  chained  by  the 
system  He  has  made.  It  is  clear  that  His  laws  are 
His  uniform  ways  of  doing  things  and  that  they  come 
from  His  character  and  not  from  any  inherent  meta- 
physical necessity.  And  it  is  clear  that  while  He  will 
never  break  with  uniformity  unless  there  is  a  su- 
preme ethical  reason  for  so  doing,  when  there  is  such 
a  reason  there  is  no  ontological  difficulty.  All  this 
being  true  the  practical  problem  in  connection  with 
the  transcendent  activities  of  Jesus  is  essentially  the 
problem  of  an  ethical  reason  sufficient  to  justify  such 
activities.  Those  to  whom  Jesus  has  made  the  su- 
preme ethical  and  intellectual  and  spiritual  appeal 
are  not  likely  to  have  any  difficult  hesitations  as  to 
the  far-reaching  ethical  relationships  of  His  greatest 
deeds. 

This  brings  us,  of  course,  to  the  central  matter: 
How  is  it  possible  to  classify  Jesus?  Can  we  place 
Him  in  any  existing  class  ?  Or  must  we  find  a  new 
class  for  Him  alone? 

This  matter  is  best  approached  through  a  study  of 
the  experience  of  the  disciples.  And  at  the  outset 
we  are  struck  by  the  fact  that  Jesus  did  not  make  any 


98  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

dogmatic  convictions  about  His  person  a  condition  of 
accepting  men  as  His  disciples.  He  did  not  say: 
' '  If  you  believe  that  I  am  the  Son  of  God  follow  me 
and  I  will  make  you  fishers  of  men."  At  the  be- 
ginning it  was  enough  that  men  should  follow  Him. 
At  the  beginning  it  was  enough  that  they  cared  to 
be  with  Him.  At  the  beginning  it  was  enough  that 
they  accepted  His  practical  leadership.  At  the  be- 
ginning it  was  enough  that  they  became  His  friends. 
A  certain  attitude  toward  His  person  was  to  be  the 
result  of  companionship  with  Him  and  not  a  pre- 
liminary necessity.  And  when  men  came  to  live  with 
Him  and  to  travel  about  with  Him,  when  they  lis- 
tened to  His  teaching  and  followed  with  eager  eyes 
His  wonderful  works,  He  did  not  tell  them  who  He 
was,  He  waited  until  they  could  tell  Him  who  He 
was.  He  just  allowed  the  whole  tremendous  impact 
of  His  personality  to  be  felt  by  them.  He  let  the  full 
friendly  majestic  splendour  of  His  life  fall  upon 
them. 

So  time  passed.  So  they  watched  and  listened  and 
thought  and  grew.  And  at  last  a  time  of  strategy 
came  at  Cassarea  Philippi.  It  was  not  a  time  of 
strategy  because  He  felt  that  He  could  make  a 
declaration.  It  was  a  time  of  strategy  because  He 
felt  that  He  could  ask  a  question.  First  He  put  it 
in  indirect  form :  What  were  men  saying  in  their  at- 
tempts to  account  for  Him  ?  "When  this  form  of  the 
question  received  its  reply  He  became  more  direct: 
"Whom  do  you  say  that  I  am?"  It  was  the  one 
probing  central  question  and  He  cared  deeply  about 
the  answer.     He  did  not  care  about  a  merely  verbal 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  99 

answer,  but  if  He  could  get  the  right  answer  welling 
up  from  the  experience  of  contact  of  these  men  with 
His  life  and  from  the  impression  which  He  had  made 
upon  them  that  would  be  a  great  achievement.  We 
can  almost  see  the  disciples  stumbling  about  trying 
to  find  a  word  which  is  big  enough  and  potent  enough 
to  describe  Him.  There  is  the  great  old  word 
prophet.  It  is  a  fine  word.  It  is  a  word  with  a  noble 
history.  But  you  cannot  get  all  of  Jesus  into  that 
word.  The  word  falls  to  pieces  under  the  strain  and 
lies  broken  before  your  eyes.  There  is  the  sacred 
old  word  priest.  It  too  has  a  long  history.  It  too 
has  great  memories  of  God 's  dealings  with  men.  But 
the  word  priest  is  not  great  enough  to  contain  all 
there  is  of  Jesus.  It  falls  apart  under  the  pressure. 
It  is  only  a  broken  fragment  of  a  word  in  the  pres- 
ence of  such  a  task.  At  last  Peter  finds  a  word. 
His  face  flushes  with  the  glory  of  it  as  he  cries: 
"Thou  art  the  Christ  the  son  of  the  living  God." 
To  find  a  great  enough  word  to  describe  Jesus  he 
had  to  call  Him  God. 

Now  of  course  Peter  was  not  a  philosopher.  He 
was  not  a  trained  metaphysician.  He  was  not  a 
formal  theologian.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  all  that 
trained  thinkers  have  ever  affirmed  of  Jesus  as  a 
result  of  really  vital  and  disciplined  thinking  was 
implicit  in  the  eager  words  of  Peter.  But  the  im- 
portant point  about  it  all  is  this.  The  word  which 
Peter  spoke  while  the  other  disciples  listened  with 
eager  approving  faces,  was  not  the  result  of  formal 
speculation  about  Jesus.  It  was  the  sharpening  into 
a  sentence  of  telling  words  the  whole  impression 


IOO  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

which  Jesus  had  made  upon  His  disciples.  Now- 
clear  and  cogent  thinking  can  render  a  real  service 
in  relation  to  conceptions  of  this  kind  as  they  come 
fresh  and  warm  from  our  deep  experience.  But  the 
material  must  come  from  a  deep  and  mastering  per- 
sonal contact.  A  formal  acquiescence  in  ever  so 
noble  a  formulation  about  the  great  matters  of  re- 
ligion is  a  thing  of  small  moment.  And  if  men  per- 
sist in  this  sort  of  formal  assent  as  a  substitute  for 
vital  contact,  the  whole  thing  becomes  hopelessly  un- 
real, until,  at  last,  the  very  words  which  once  dripped 
with  the  vitalities  of  a  personal  relation  are  hard  and 
cold  and  lifeless. 

A  doctrine  which  is  the  flower  of  a  personal  ex- 
perience is  a  beautiful  and  wonderful  thing.  A  doc- 
trine which  is  the  intellectual  substitute  for  a  per- 
sonal experience  is  like  a  perfectly  articulated  skele- 
ton with  no  vital  organs,  no  flesh,  and  no  life.  And 
the  tremendously  important  thing  about  all  this  may 
be  said  in  a  sentence.  Every  man  must  come  to  his 
own  grip  upon  the  meaning  of  Christ's  person 
through  an  experience  of  contact  and  friendship  and 
growth  and  transformation  just  as  did  the  disciples. 
You  cannot  enforce  this  sort  of  thing  from  without. 
It  must  be  unfolded  from  within.  And  it  must  be 
the  most  perfectly  simple  and  natural  growth  and 
not  something  which  is  put  into  the  soil  of  a  life  as 
a  flagstaff  is  put  into  the  ground.  Each  man  must 
come  to  the  place  where  he  has  to  hunt  for  a  word 
great  enough  to  describe  what  Christ  is  to  him  and 
in  him  and  for  him.  And  in  the  light  of  that  ap- 
proach through  experience  he  will  have  a  vital  as 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  IOI 

distinguished  from  a  formal  relation  to  the  great 
theme. 

The  real  approach  then  is  through  ethical  experi- 
ence. When  a  man  sees  the  achievement  of  Jesus 
over  against  his  own  failure.  When  he  feels  the 
kindling  and  creative  power  of  that  life,  and  as  he 
surrenders  to  the  leadership  of  the  master  con- 
stantly discovers  new  and  wonderful  potencies  com- 
ing from  the  one  great  life  into  his,  he  will  come  to 
the  place  where  he  must  classify  this  great  unique 
helper  and  friend  and  deliverer  and  master.  It  is 
only  so  approached  that  the  high  word  about  Jesus 
has  robust  and  adequate  authenticity. 

The  men  of  the  Gospels  moved  toward  a  rudi- 
mentary theology  then  through  their  experience. 
And  while  we  may  not  be  able  to  feel  that  their 
thinking  attained  very  complete  or  systematic  form 
in  the  preliminary  period  of  their  ethical  and  spiri- 
tual apprenticeship,  we  are  surely  able  to  see  the 
splendid  strategy  and  the  permanent  significance  of 
the  method  by  which  they  were  led.  It  begins  to  be 
very  clear  as  we  watch  the  process  by  which  they 
came  to  vital  and  compelling  views  about  Jesus  that 
the  really  productive  beliefs  are  not  only  those  which 
function  in  experience,  but  are  indeed  also  those 
which  come  out  of  experience.  They  are  vital  in 
their  conception.  And  they  are  vital  and  fruitful 
in  their  action. 

When  Jesus  dies  there  is  something  abnormally 
tragic  about  the  distress  of  the  disciples.  It  is  not 
like  an  ordinary  death.  We  are  so  aware  that  death 
is  a  necessary  part  of  human  experience  that  we  think 


102  THE  PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

of  life  instinctively  partly  in  the  terms  of  death. 
But  when  Jesus  was  crucified  it  was  as  if  all  that  He 
stood  for  had  perished  from  the  earth.  It  was  as  if 
love  and  justice  and  righteousness  had  died  with 
Him.  And  there  is  a  curious  thing  about  the  im- 
pression it  all  makes.  You  have  a  strange  feeling 
that  He  had  no  right  to  die.  At  least  you  have  a 
feeling  that  He  cannot  stay  dead.  The  life  He  lived 
propels  itself  forward.  The  whole  impact  of  His 
personality  so  vital,  so  magnetic,  so  supremely  power- 
ful in  all  ethical  and  spiritual  things,  the  unutterable 
dynamic  which  went  out  from  Him:  all  these  seem 
incompatible  with  death.  You  are  not  surprised 
when  you  hear  the  resurrection  story.  You  would 
be  surprised  not  to  hear  the  resurrection  story.  The 
broken  tomb  seems  natural  for  Him.  It  would  seem 
unbelievable  in  any  one  else. 

At  the  same  time  one  must  admit  that  belief  in 
the  resurrection  must  meet  one  great  test.  That  is 
not  the  analysis  of  the  resurrection  stories  though 
that  analysis  is  legitimate  enough.  The  real  test  is 
this:  Has  anything  gone  forth  into  the  life  of  the 
world  from  this  personality  so  unique  and  high  and 
transforming  that  this  tremendous  influence  in  some 
genuine  fashion  validates  the  belief  in  the  resurrec- 
tion. There  is  no  conceivable  evidence  which  would 
cause  us  to  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  vile 
emperor  Nero.  And  the  Christ  of  the  twenty  cen- 
turies must  answer  some  questions  which  have  the 
most  direct  relation  to  the  Christ  of  the  resurrection 
morning. 

When  we  ask  the  question :  Has  the  belief  in  Jesus 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  103 

been  a  productive  force  in  the  life  of  the  twenty 
centuries  since  He  lived?  we  are  fairly  overwhelmed 
by  the  amount  of  significant  material  which  lies  wait- 
ing for  our  inspection.  Within  a  century  after  His 
death  His  name  had  been  carried  along  every  Roman 
road  in  the  great  Empire.  Men  of  all  sorts  of  lan- 
guage and  race  and  custom  and  temperament  and 
personal  quality  had  surrendered  to  His  claims  and 
were  building  their  whole  life  about  His  leadership. 
When  the  vast  resources  of  the  Empire  were  called 
into  action  to  crush  out  the  movement  men  died  with 
a  transcendent  enthusiasm  as  if  the  new  relation  had 
come  to  mean  so  much  to  them  that  death  itself  was 
incidental.  Before  four  centuries  had  passed  the 
religion  which  Jesus  had  founded  had  conquered  all 
opposition  and  had  become  the  official  religion  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  The  imperial  eagle  had  become  the 
symbol  of  an  empire  which  acknowledged  the  lord- 
ship of  Christ.  And  this  had  come  to  pass  not 
through  a  series  of  magnificently  victorious  wars,  but 
through  the  strange  and  mastering  resistance  which 
was  willing  to  die  but  would  not  be  false  to  the  faith. 
It  was  simply  impossible  to  kill  Christians  as  fast  as 
new  adherents  accepted  the  faith.  Against  every 
pressure  of  personal  interest  and  hope  of  success  in 
human  relationships  men  clung  to  their  faith  in 
Jesus  until  at  last  in  despair  of  crushing  the  move- 
ment the  Empire  surrendered  to  it. 

And  this  amazing  practical  success  was  accom- 
panied by  a  wonderful  effect  upon  the  various 
relationships  of  the  men  who  became  followers  of  the 
new    religion.     There    were    human    inconsistencies 


104  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

enough.  There  was  folly  and  futility  and  falseness 
among  them.  But  multitudes  of  people  were  quite 
made  over  as  far  as  the  whole  ethical  and  social  and 
spiritual  quality  of  their  life  was  concerned.  In 
debauched  and  decadent  cities  men  turned  from 
alluring  vices  and  lived  with  actual  decency  and 
noble  self-control.  When  plagues  came  and  multi- 
tudes were  swept  away  the  Christian  population  be- 
haved with  a  quiet  steadiness,  a  friendly  solicitude 
for  all  who  suffered,  and  an  utterly  unselfish  willing- 
ness to  take  personal  risks  which  bewildered  and 
astonished  their  neighbours.  Multitudes  of  men  and 
women  did  live  loving  unselfish  lives  utterly  at  vari- 
ance with  their  old  habits.  And  when  they  were 
asked  the  secret  of  this  they  referred  to  the  one  im- 
perial personality  which  had  changed  all  the  world 
for  them. 

When  the  Barbarian  invasions  came  it  was  the 
Christian  forces  which  tamed  the  Barbarians.  The 
Roman  Empire  went  down  before  the  shock  of  the 
prolonged  attack.  But  Christianity  conquered  the 
conquerors  and  at  last  made  them  into  men  of  civili- 
zation. It  was  not  a  task  suddenly  accomplished. 
But  it  was  a  task  which  Christianity  brought  to  a 
successful  conclusion.  And  all  the  while  Christi- 
anity had  a  way  of  setting  itself  against  popular 
evils  and  abuses.  Gladiatorial  combats  went  down 
before  the  new  spirit  which  Christianity  had  brought 
into  the  world.  And  when  evils  entered  the  Church 
there  was  some  one  ready  sooner  or  later  to  protest 
in  the  name  of  the  high  and  unselfish  character  of 
Jesus,  and  again  and  again  the  evil  went  down  be- 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  105 

fore  the  impact  of  this  attack.  When  the  mighty 
Mohammedan  movement  swept  over  the  world  it 
seemed  for  a  time  that  it  would  be  irresistible.  But 
Constantinople  barred  the  eastward  gates  and  at  last 
at  the  battle  of  Tours  in  732  Charles  Martel  checked 
the  western  advance  of  the  movement.  And  the  in- 
spiration to  save  the  world  from  Mohammedan  con- 
quest centered  in  the  thought  of  the  contrast  between 
the  Cross  and  the  crescent,  between  Mohammed  and 
Christ.  The  Middle  Ages  saw  many  brutal  and  ugly 
things  find  their  place  in  the  life  of  the  Church. 
But  all  the  while  the  mastery  of  Jesus  haunted  men 's 
minds.  When  Hildebrand  dreamed  his  mistaken 
dream  of  a  world  organized  about  the  human  repre- 
sentative of  Jesus  he  was  inspired  by  a  passionate 
loyalty  to  the  reign  of  Christ.  And  all  the  power  of 
the  papal  idea  to  seize  men's  minds  rested  back  at 
last  upon  the  thought  that  it  represented  the  victory 
of  Christ.  The  man  of  Galilee  possessed  the  heart  of 
Christendom.  When  the  wonderful  Franciscan  re- 
vival of  the  thirteenth  century  swept  out  on  its  gay, 
glad,  singing,  unselfish  way  to  renew  the  hearts  of 
men  it  was  the  result  of  a  fresh  sense  of  contact  with 
Jesus  Christ.  His  word  as  men  then  interpreted  it 
made  a  man  a  Franciscan.  And  all  the  lowly  service, 
all  the  beneficent  activity  of  the  great  revival  go  back 
to  Jesus  Himself  for  inspiration.  When  the  Church 
descended  to  depths  of  humiliation  and  often  to 
depths  of  degradation  in  the  fourteenth  century,  it 
was  the  memory  of  the  stainless  Christ  and  His  con- 
ception of  unity  and  faithfulness  among  His  fol- 
lowers which  gave  potency  to  the  call  for  reform. 


106  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

When  the  Great  Schism  came  it  was  the  body  of 
Christ  which  was  divided  and  the  sense  of  that  ap- 
palling tragedy  made  men  feel  that  something  must 
be  done.  Into  the  Church  from  His  own  high  and 
holy  personality  has  come  a  passion  for  righteousness 
which  did  not  come  to  complete  eclipse  even  in  the 
darkest  days.  The  institution  founded  by  Jesus  is 
almost  unique  in  its  capacity  to  produce  profound 
and  healing  critics  from  within.  Wiclif ,  Savonarola, 
and  Hus  are  but  indications  of  an  undying  spirit 
which  Jesus  has  bequeathed  to  the  Church  and  which 
made  itself  felt  in  the  darkest  days.  The  Reforma- 
tion was  a  rediscovery  of  the  fundamental  vitalities 
of  the  Christian  religion.  It  must  be  admitted  that 
there  was  always  the  danger  that  Jesus  would  be 
lost  in  the  involved  system  with  which  the  medieval 
Church  saw  Him  surrounded.  The  Reformation  saw 
Him  emerge  and  take  His  place  of  leadership  uncon- 
fused  by  bewildering  ecclesiastical  relationships. 
And  from  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  sometimes 
rapidly  and  sometimes  more  slowly  the  actual  quality 
of  the  conceptions  of  Jesus  has  been  making  a  place 
for  itself  in  the  world. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  very  warp  and 
woof  of  the  ethical  life  of  the  contemporary  man 
comes  from  Jesus.  Even  the  man  least  friendly  to 
the  Church,  even  the  man  least  responsive  to  the 
ministries  of  religion,  cannot  avoid  looking  upon 
multitudes  of  problems  of  right  and  wrong  through 
the  eyes  of  Jesus.  This  is  true  because  the  eyes  of 
Jesus  have  become  the  eyes  of  civilization  itself. 
And  all  the  while,  in  ages  bright  and  in  ages  dark, 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  IO7 

individual  lives  have  been  moulded  and  refashioned 
by  the  influence  of  Jesus.  A  multitude  which  no 
man  can  number  has  found  the  way  into  purity  and 
integrity  and  unselfishness  and  brotherly  love 
through  the  power  of  the  Man  of  Galilee.  In  the 
darkest  ages  He  has  produced  white  lives.  And  the 
brightest  ages  in  the  qualities  of  character  and  good- 
ness have  been  bright  because  men  opened  their  lives 
to  His  influence  and  allowed  His  spirit  and  His  prin- 
ciples to  become  dominant  in  their  relationships. 
As  His  spirit  has  entered  more  deeply  into  the  lives 
of  men  institutions  have  felt  the  touch  of  His  regal 
hand.  Sometimes  the  fight  has  been  long.  But 
when  it  once  becomes  evident  that  a  great  institution 
is  contrary  to  the  will  of  Jesus  you  have  heard  the 
preliminary  sentence  of  doom.  Slavery  went  down 
before  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  Every  reform  has  re- 
ceived wings  of  power  from  Him.  The  great  move- 
ment for  making  the  lot  of  all  workers  fairer  and 
more  secure  has  a  pressure  back  of  it  from  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  which  many  men  have  never  realized.  The 
movement  for  more  democratic  government  has  had 
an  ally  in  the  thought  of  every  man  as  a  possible  son 
of  God  through  the  touch  of  Jesus  Christ  which  has 
undermined  slavish  political  conservatism  and  has 
hastened  the  coming  of  the  new  day.  Wistful  men 
are  all  the  while  comparing  the  visible  world  with 
the  ideals  of  Jesus.  And  this  perpetual  contrast  as 
men  become  more  sharply  conscious  of  it  is  a  per- 
petual inspiration  of  movements  to  refashion  human 
relationships  after  His  desire.  The  fairest  idealisms 
of  the  world  become  mastering  to  the  thought  of  men 


108  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

and  move  toward  becoming  actual  in  the  lives  of  men 
through  the  perpetual  influence  of  Jesus  Christ. 

And  His  influence  is  always  felt  in  the  direction  of 
the  conserving  of  the  best  in  the  old  as  well  as  the 
moving  forward  to  possess  the  new.  With  His  own 
splendid  regard  for  every  good  thing  in  the  past  of 
His  nation,  with  His  unwillingness  to  break  one 
sacred  sanction  which  had  ethical  and  spiritual 
vitality  in  it,  He  has  infused  a  wise  caution  into  that 
very  daring  and  radical  enthusiasm  which  He  has 
created.  In  Jesus  every  true  element  in  the  con- 
servative and  every  true  element  in  the  radical  met 
together  and  lived  in  harmony  and  peace.  And  the 
impact  of  His  influence  upon  the  world  tends  to 
secure  just  that  consummation  in  the  world's  life. 
He  is  the  soul  of  the  world's  noble  restlessness.  He 
is  the  soul  of  the  world's  careful  stability.  And  He 
is  keeping  both  alive  in  potent  and  functioning  fash- 
ion in  the  lives  of  men. 

That  which  has  come  from  the  personality  of  Jesus 
into  the  world  is  of  simply  incalculable  range  and 
depth  and  power.  And  its  ethical  stimulus  and  its 
spiritual  inspiration  make  it  the  very  supreme 
potency  for  good  among  men.  The  later  history  of 
His  influence  is  a  most  significant  and  potent  con- 
firmation of  the  resurrection  stories.  Not  unworthily 
we  can  believe  that  the  source  of  all  this  moral  and 
spiritual  power  was  able  to  break  the  chains  of  death. 
The  imperial  personality  is  never  more  imperial  than 
as  we  see  its  impact  upon  succeeding  generations  of 
the  most  various  sorts  of  people  in  the  most  widely 
scattered  parts  of  the  world. 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  I09 

There  is  an  even  more  intimate  contact  with  the 
personality  of  Jesus  which  we  must  consider  if  we 
would  come  into  actual  knowledge  of  the  secret  of 
His  power.  Some  one  has  said  that  on  the  day  of 
Pentecost  Jesus  walked  out  of  men's  memories  into 
their  hearts.  He  ceased  to  be  merely  the  Christ  of 
history  and  became  the  Christ  of  experience.  He 
was  no  longer  merely  the  Christ  of  a  past  activity. 
He  was  the  Christ  of  a  present  and  active  power. 
Now  there  is  no  doubt  in  the  world  that  to  multitudes 
of  people  in  the  first  century  and  since  these  words 
are  a  fairly  accurate  description  of  an  actual  ex- 
perience. It  may  be  objected  that  we  have  left  the 
solid  ground  and  have  entered  the  uncertain  and 
treacherous  ground  of  mysticism.  Fortunately  the 
particular  approach  of  these  lectures  at  once  disarms 
this  criticism  of  any  real  relevancy.  We  are  asking 
the  question  as  to  what  beliefs  have  proved  pro- 
ductive and  what  beliefs  have  it  in  them  to  prove 
productive.  And  so  the  question  of  the  practical 
productiveness  of  the  belief  in  the  actual  presence  of 
the  living  Christ  becomes  a  very  simple  and  a  very 
natural  and  a  very  proper  question.  Indeed,  if  we 
would  deal  fairly  with  all  the  data  at  our  command 
we  simply  must  ask  this  question.  For  as  a  matter 
of  fact  this  belief  is  one  of  the  most  potent  of  which 
we  know  anything. 

From  the  early  days  of  persecution  onward  men 
were  steadied  and  strengthened  for  the  hardest  times 
of  testing  and  for  the  most  difficult  and  even  terrible 
experiences  by  the  thought  that  Christ  Himself  was 
with    them.    Sometimes    the    belief    burned    more 


HO  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

brightly  than  at  other  times.  And  in  some  ages  it 
was  in  clearer  consciousness  than  in  others.  But  on 
the  whole  it  may  be  said  that  the  Church  was  made 
brave  and  unflinching  and  confident  and  really 
dauntless  by  the  belief  that  Christ  was  with  it.  And 
the  individual  Christian  was  lifted  into  a  new  quality 
of  life  because  he  believed  that  Christ  Himself  was 
with  him  in  his  hour  of  trial.  There  is  a  fine  story 
about  the  time  immediately  preceding  our  own  which 
illustrates  this.  Dr.  Robert  William  Dale,  the  famous 
pastor  of  Carr's  Lane  Church  in  Birmingham,  was 
one  day  at  work  upon  an  Easter  sermon.  He  had 
just  written  the  sentence:  "  Christ  is  alive."  He 
stopped  to  look  at  it.  He  began  walking  to  and  fro 
in  his  study  saying  it  over  and  over  again.  The 
thought  possessed  him.  In  sharp  and  poignant 
realization  the  conviction  cut  its  way  more  and  more 
deeply  into  his  life  that  it  was  indeed  true.  Christ 
was  not  dead.  He  was  alive.  He  was  alive.  Wave 
upon  wave  the  realization  of  its  meaning  swept  over 
the  soul  of  the  responsive  preacher.  And  what  be- 
gan as  the  experience  of  an  illuminated  moment 
settled  down  into  the  very  heart  of  his  being  and  be- 
came one  of  the  central  structural  certainties  of  his 
life.  From  that  day  he  announced  an  Easter  hymn 
every  Sunday  in  Carr's  Lane  Church.  He  said  that 
he  was  determined  that  at  least  one  congregation  in 
England  should  know  that  Christ  is  alive.  His 
powerful  book,  "The  Living  Christ  and  the  Four 
Gospels,''  translates  the  experience  into  its  larger 
significance  and  expresses  it  in  profound  practical 
and  philosophical  relationships. 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  III 

The  story  of  the  triumphs  of  Christianity  in  the 
world  is  to  a  far  larger  degree  than  most  people 
realize  a  story  of  the  inspiration  coming  from  a 
sense  of  contact  with  the  Christ  who  is  alive  and 
present  and  actually  powerful  in  the  lives  of  all  His 
followers.  The  great  missionaries  have  endured 
hardship  and  persecution  and  illness  and  all  the 
manifold  difficulties  of  their  lot  because  they  have 
been  convinced  that  though  far  from  home  and  the 
civilization  which  meant  all  the  world  to  them  and 
all  the  sacred  sanctions  of  religion  as  they  express 
themselves  in  a  mature  Christian  civilization,  they 
were  not  absent  from  Christ.  He  was  with  them. 
He  was  their  companion.  He  was  their  guide.  He 
was  their  friend.  And  with  singing  hearts  and 
kindled  eyes  and  vibrant  vital  voices  they  went  on 
with  their  work  in  the  joy  of  His  presence.  For 
actual  functioning  power  in  the  lives  of  men  this 
conception  stands  out  as  ethically  and  spiritually 
one  of  the  most  mighty  known  among  men.  Living- 
stone knelt  alone  in  the  heart  of  Africa  when  he 
died.  But  in  his  own  thought  he  was  not  alone. 
The  one  thing  which  eternally  mattered  was  his  as- 
surance that  the  living  Christ  was  with  him.  And 
of  that  the  story  of  his  inner  life  as  his  letters  tell  it 
leaves  no  doubt.  The  belief  that  Christ  never  calls 
a  missionary  to  go  where  He  does  not  go  before  to 
prepare  the  way  is  one  of  the  most  high  and  sacred 
assets  of  the  missionary  enterprise. 

There  is  a  wonderfully  organic  quality  about  all 
these  things  we  have  been  saying  about  the  imperial 
personality.    What  He  was,  what  He  did,  what  He 


112  THE   PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

said,  the  flaming  glory  of  the  resurrection,  the  age 
long  impact  of  His  personality  upon  the  unfolding 
life  of  the  world,  the  high  and  commanding  experi- 
ence of  Christ  as  perpetually  alive  and  perpetually 
present  constitute  an  organism  of  belief  every  part 
of  which  fits  into  every  other  part,  and  all  of  which 
together  constitute  our  full  impression  of  Him.  It 
is  the  one  of  whom  we  can  make  all  these  affirmations 
who  is  indeed  possessed  of  the  most  far-reaching  and 
regal  power.  And  all  of  this  is  really  seen  in  its 
vital  meaning  as  we  approach  it  through  the  experi- 
ence of  individual  men  and  of  the  world.  This  per- 
sonality has  functioned  and  is  functioning  more 
potently  than  any  other  in  all  the  range  of  our 
knowledge. 

To  those  who  have  felt  the  potency  and  reality  of 
what  has  been  said  so  far  there  is  another  thing 
which  must  be  said  in  order  to  complete  the  necessary 
statements  about  Jesus.  He  is  not  apart  from  this 
age.  He  is  of  this  age.  He  belongs  to  its  life.  He 
is  indeed,  as  has  well  been  said,  every  man's  con- 
temporary. But  it  is  particularly  significant  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  men  now  in  the  world  that  He 
is  their  contemporary.  The  Christ  of  the  ages? 
Yes.  But  most  of  all  from  our  standpoint  the  Christ 
of  To-day.  To  many  a  man  in  the  trenches  every- 
thing was  changed  by  this  discovery.  The  dim  and 
exquisite  Christ  of  his  churchly  vision  became  the 
torn  and  wounded  Christ  with  him  in  the  smoke  of 
battle,  in  the  torturing  tenseness  of  every  hard  and 
painful  experience.  In  the  front  lines  they  found 
Him.    Over  the  top  they  found  Him.    At  the  lonely 


THE   IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  113 

listening  post  they  found  Him.  Wherever  they  were 
called  to  go  He  was  their  companion.  And  of  this 
group  of  men  to  whom  the  whole  experience  was  a 
revelation  of  the  nearness  of  the  mighty  master, 
there  were  those  not  a  few  who  came  to  feel  with 
deep  and  assured  conviction  that  He  is  doing  some- 
thing in  the  midst  of  all  the  blackness  and  cruelty 
and  barbarity  of  war.  They  came  to  feel  that  the 
whole  far  flung  battle  line  had  an  invisible  Captain 
and  that  that  Captain  was  Christ.  They  came  to  feel 
that  through  the  war  and  after  the  war  there  were 
great  things  which  He  was  to  do  in  the  world.  This 
conviction  made  them  willing  to  die.  This  same 
conviction  made  them  ready  to  live.  It  put  light 
into  their  eyes.  It  put  courage  into  their  hearts.  It 
put  meaning  into  the  passing  days. 

The  productive  power  of  such  a  belief  is  evident 
at  once.  It  makes  the  ground  solid  under  a  man's 
feet.  It  gives  him  the  deepest  and  most  sacred  sort 
of  cause  for  which  to  fight.  It  gives  him  a  future  to 
which  to  look  forward.  It  makes  even  a  grim  and 
sordid  and  cruel  world  a  spot  where  the  flowers  are 
ready  to  bloom  and  where  better  days  are  coming. 
The  man  who  had  been  tempted  to  think  of  life  as  a 
tale  told  by  an  idiot  and  signifying  nothing,  comes 
to  think  of  it  as  a  great  conflict  with  God  in  the 
battle,  with  the  living  Christ  as  the  leader,  and  with 
the  worst  and  hardest  days  as  bursting  with  possi- 
bilities of  good  for  the  time  which  is  to  come.  There 
were  men  who  had  no  such  belief.  There  were  men 
who  had  no  such  inspiration.  We  are  not  talking  of 
them.    We  are  speaking  of  the  productive  power  to 


114  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

those  who  possess  it  of  a  belief  in  the  mighty  Christ 
at  work  at  a  great  task  in  the  world  to-day.  The 
sense  of  partnership  in  a  noble  endeavour  is  one  of 
the  finest  experiences  which  can  come  to  men.  The 
sense  of  partnership  in  a  desperate  and  surpassingly 
difficult  task  is  shot  through  with  the  splendour  of 
the  sacrificial  commitment  which  the  task  requires. 
The  sense  of  partnership  with  the  Son  of  God  in  the 
remaking  of  the  world  has  power  in  it  to  pull  forth 
every  hidden  energy  and  every  slumbering  potency 
of  a  man's  life. 

Over  against  the  world  with  Jesus  in  it,  you  can 
place  a  world  from  which  He  has  forever  departed. 
You  can  think  your  way  out  into  a  world  where  no 
man  has  ever  felt  the  challenge  of  His  teaching  and 
no  man  has  ever  felt  the  compulsion  of  His  person- 
ality. You  can  create  for  your  own  mind  a  world 
which  He  has  never  shamed  into  unselfishness  and  a 
world  which  He  has  never  inspired  to  loving  brother- 
hood. You  can  piece  together  for  your  own  thought 
the  structure  of  a  world  whose  life  age  after  age  has 
never  been  mellowed  and  deepened  and  heightened 
by  the  pressure  of  His  spirit  upon  it.  You  can  call 
together  through  the  strength  of  your  own  mind  a 
civilization  to  which  He  has  not  given  eyes  of  justice 
and  hands  of  service  and  a  heart  of  pity.  You  can 
formulate  for  your  own  satisfaction  a  world  beneath 
whose  surface  of  passion  and  pain  and  cruelty  there 
is  moving  no  mighty  invisible  presence  of  a  living 
Christ  to  bring  good  out  of  evil  and  hope  out  of  fear 
and  joy  out  of  sorrow  and  the  best  from  the  worst. 
You  can  imagine  all  of  these  things.    And  when  you 


THE  IMPERIAL  PERSONALITY  115 

have  gazed  at  the  picture  until  you  can  tolerate  it  no 
longer  you  can  come  back  to  this  world  where  we  live. 
It  has  its  brutal  evils.  It  has  its  inane  futilities. 
It  has  its  long-drawn  tragedies.  But  it  is  a  world 
rimmed  with  gold  for  all  that.  It  is  a  world  with 
rainbows  moving  about  it  in  spite  of  the  evil  and  the 
pain.  And  the  saving  glorious  thing  about  this  world 
is  seen  in  its  full  meaning  in  the  light  of  the 
imperial  personality  of  Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  very  nature  of  the  whole  case  one  more 
thing  must  be  said.  The  test  of  this  interpretation 
must  be  found  not  in  its  consideration  by  a  lonely 
meditative  mind.  The  analytic  processes  of  formal 
logic  cannot  reach  this  high  realm.  There  is  one  test 
which  is  adequate.  There  is  one  test  alone  which  can 
be  safely  applied.  That  is  the  laboratory  test.  All 
the  facts  and  all  the  experiences  and  all  the  prin- 
ciples which  we  have  covered  should  be  ample  basis 
for  the  adventure  of  personal  experiment.  Each  man 
must  try  the  thing  out  for  himself.  Each  woman 
must  try  the  thing  through  for  herself.  In  the  actual 
laboratory  of  life  we  must  give  the  imperial  per- 
sonality the  opportunity  of  functioning  in  our  lives. 
Then  description  will  be  changed  to  experience.  And 
thought  will  be  changed  to  action.  And  speculation 
will  be  changed  to  appropriation.  The  final  strength 
of  the  imperial  personality  lies  just  in  the  fact  that 
He  never  fails  when  you  make  the  laboratory  test. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  VITAL  MEANING 
OF  THE  CROSS 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS 

AN  age  without  a  cross  can  never  understand 
the  Cross.  An  age  with  a  Golgotha  of  its 
own  can  begin  to  understand  the  Calvary  of 
Christ.  An  age  which  has  staggered  up  its  own  hill 
of  pain  to  be  crucified  can  better  know  the  meaning 
of  that  agony  of  long  ago.  John  Oxenham's  memo- 
rable poem  in  which  he  tells  how  an  English  soldier 
from  a  cross  to  which  the  Germans  had  nailed  him 
looked  into  the  eyes  of  the  One  who  had  hung  upon 
that  other  Cross  and  looking  found  all  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  forever  changed  for  him,  is  full  of 
meaning  for  the  reader  who  brings  to  the  story  a 
responsive  and  understanding  heart.  The  four  years 
of  the  world  war  did  many  amazing  and  terrible  and 
wonderful  things  in  the  life  of  men.  And  one  of  the 
greatest  of  them  all  was  the  preparing  of  the  world 
for  a  new  understanding  of  Calvary. 

When  people  have  an  invisible  cross  in  their 
hearts  it  is  not  so  difficult  for  them  to  come  to  some 
real  and  telling  contact  with  the  Cross  which  bore  its 
tragic  burden  on  the  Green  Hill  far  away  so  long  ago. 
The  little  wooden  crosses  in  France  all  represent 
hidden  crosses  in  human  hearts  somewhere.  There 
are  fathers  and  mothers  and  sweethearts  and  friends 

119 


120  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

who  go  about  their  tasks  in  what  may  seem  to  be  very 
much  the  same  old  way.  But  all  the  while  they  are 
bearing  about  the  cross  which  no  eye  can  see — the 
cross  which  corresponds  to  some  wooden  cross  on 
Flanders  fields.  These  men  and  women  young  and 
old  have  new  eyes  of  the  spirit.  They  have  eyes 
which  have  been  cleansed  by  pain,  and  eyes  which 
have  been  given  clear  and  noble  vision  by  the  lonely 
hours  of  grief.  When  they  are  asked  to  follow  along 
the  way  of  sorrow  through  which  Jesus  passed  it  is 
not  a  new  and  strange  way  where  all  the  sights  are 
unfamiliar  and  all  the  experiences  are  foreign  to  any- 
thing which  they  have  ever  known.  They  too  have 
moved  wearily  and  with  slow  and  suffering  steps 
along  a  way  of  sorrow.  There  is  a  quality  about  His 
way  which  gives  them  a  sense  of  awakened  memory. 
With  a  little  gleam  of  surprise  they  feel  a  touch  of 
companionship  with  Him,  that  deep  and  unf  or  get- 
able  companionship  of  a  common  experience  of 
pain. 

For  the  time  at  least  we  have  been  delivered  from 
that  superficial  optimism  which  so  bitterly  disliked  to 
look  upon  any  hard  experiences  or  to  admit  the  pres- 
ence of  any  unlovely  thing  in  the  world.  The  very 
unconscious  hardness  of  its  abounding  enthusiasm 
wounded  many  a  sensitive  heart  in  the  old  days  when 
the  creed  of  shouting  optimism  made  slaves  of  us  all. 
Sooner  or  later  it  is  inevitable  that  we  would  have 
seen  the  folly  and  the  self-deception  involved  in  the 
gay  refusal  to  admit  the  presence  of  dark  and  malig- 
nant evil  in  the  world.  But  what  might  have  come 
very  slowly  did  come  very  quickly.     Our  smug  and 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS     121 

complacent  optimisms  went  down  before  the  blast  of 
the  war  and  they  are  as  though  they  had  never  been. 
A  new  spirit  of  ethical  honesty  has  gone  over  all  the 
world.  In  this  mood  of  chastened  candour,  in  this 
attitude  of  humble  consciousness  of  the  evil  of  life, 
we  look  upon  the  Cross  with  a  capacity  to  see  there 
what  was  invisible  to  us  before.  We  begin  to  realize 
the  meaning  of  the  great  old  words:  "Deep  calling 
unto  deep." 

To  the  investigator  who  cares  about  discovering 
what  are  the  productive  beliefs  it  is  clear  that  the 
war  has  revealed  the  lack  of  productiveness  in  certain 
interpretations  of  life  and  action  which  before  the 
world-wide  cataclysm  seemed  to  many  people  en- 
tirely adequate.  Some  of  the  sermons  preached  be- 
fore the  war  seem  curiously  light-hearted  now.  Some 
of  the  theologies  announced  confidently  before  the 
war  now  suggest  the  substitution  of  one  delightful 
summer  afternoon  for  all  the  wild  contrasts  of  the 
whole  year.  We  know  now  that  the  Christian  year 
consists  of  more  than  one  summer  day.  We  know 
that  it  includes  the  deadliest  cold  of  winter  as  well  as 
the  heat  of  summer.  The  friendly  and  easy  confi- 
dence that  human  nature  was  coming  to  a  perennial 
bloom  of  unselfishness  which  fell  so  lightly  from 
some  clerical  lips  expressed  in  mellifluous  phrases 
and  warm  with  the  speakers'  academic  assurance, 
seems  curiously  remote  now.  From  deeds  that  smite 
we  have  come  to  feel  the  weight  and  power  and  sin- 
cerity of  words  that  smite.  A  religion  which  is  as 
honest  as  the  worst  facts  of  life,  a  religion  which  is 
as  passionately  earnest  as  the  great  Hebrew  prophets, 


122  THE   PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

a  religion  which  is  as  stern  as  righteousness  and  as 
tender  as  love,  is  sure  to  have  a  welcome  and  a 
responsive  hearing  from  men  and  women  who  them- 
selves have  had  a  new  baptism  in  sincerity. 

It  is  in  such  an  attitude  as  this  that  we  must  ap- 
proach the  study  of  that  dire  tragedy  which  is  at  once 
the  darkest  spot  in  the  history  of  man  and  the  great- 
est creator  of  ethical  optimism  which  has  influenced 
the  lives  of  men.  With  all  the  new  honesty  of  a  torn 
and  broken  age  we  must  look  upon  this  age-old  trag- 
edy and  think  once  more  of  its  meaning  for  those  who 
dwell  upon  the  earth. 

The  first  thing  which  comes  home  to  us  as  we  go 
over  the  Gospel  records  is  just  the  human  appeal  of 
the  unflinching  bravery  of  it  all.  Here  was  a  man 
who  bared  His  life  to  the  tempest.  Here  was  a  man 
wTho  went  the  whole  length  of  loyalty  to  His  own  con- 
ception of  the  meaning  of  His  life.  Death  confronted 
Him.  He  looked  straight  into  the  eyes  of  death.  He 
was  a  young  man.  He  had  known  only  a  few  years 
in  this  mysterious  and  amazing  world.  His  blood 
moved  with  the  full  energy  of  youth  and  health. 
His  very  body  was  full  of  the  protest  which  youth 
ever  makes  against  death.  And  yet  He  died.  He 
chose  to  die.  He  persisted  in  a  course  of  action  which 
made  His  death  inevitable.  How  many  a  lonely  and 
homesick  boy  in  France  must  have  felt  some  sudden 
thrill  of  encouragement  as  opening  his  khaki  Testa- 
ment he  found  the  story  of  that  other  young  man 
whose  dauntless,  chivalrous  courage  did  not  count  the 
cost  but  entered  the  valley  of  the  shadows  trailing 
His  youth  after  Him  like  a  torn  garment.    In  your 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE   CROSS      1 23 

own  hour  of  supreme  need  to  find  that  your  religion 
gives  you  a  man,  a  man  of  age  like  unto  your  own, 
who  also  was  called  where  life  is  a  lonely  memory 
and  death  is  the  great  monarch,  to  make  this  dis- 
covery was  to  see  in  religion  something  so  gloriously 
near  and  real  and  helpful,  that  its  very  meaning  was 
sharpened  by  a  new  poignant  power.  Whatever  else 
Calvary  means  it  begins  by  meaning  that  life  itself 
was  incidental  when  the  demand  of  a  great  ideal 
came  sweeping  across  it,  to  the  most  gifted  and  most 
responsive  young  man  who  ever  lived  in  the  world. 

It  is  easy  to  make  religion  a  matter  of  ritual.  And 
ritual  which  is  the  expression  of  noble  truth  may 
have  a  fine  and  gracious  ministry.  It  is  easy  to  think 
of  religion  as  a  practical  program.  And  when  that 
program  challenges  men  to  service  and  shames  them 
from  sloth  and  selfishness  it  is  a  notable  and  glorious 
thing.  But  to  find  in  the  heart  of  religion  a  human 
experience.  To  find  there  a  trembling  and  eager 
young  man  full  of  the  love  of  life,  and  yet  ready 
without  hesitation  to  sacrifice  life,  full  of  the  sense 
of  the  wonderful  allurement  of  men  and  women  and 
nature  and  all  the  vivid  things  of  the  world,  and  yet 
turning  His  back  upon  everything  but  the  stern  call 
of  His  destiny,  to  find  Him  fighting  His  way  into  vic- 
tory and  struggling  His  way  into  the  strength  which 
death  could  not  daunt,  is  to  have  religion  speak  to  a 
young  man  in  war  time  in  words  so  near  and  intimate 
that  they  seem  the  telling  aloud  of  his  own  struggle 
in  a  fashion  whose  victory  is  beyond  his  hopes  and 
yet  creates  in  him  hope  and  courage  and  power. 
There  may  be  many  things  about  Christianity  which 


124  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

remained  mysterious  to  the  boys  in  the  front  trenches. 
But  Calvary  spoke  to  them  in  a  deep  and  never-to-be- 
forgotten  voice.  At  this  point  religion  met  them 
where  they  lived.  At  this  point  religion  met  them 
where  they  died. 

When  one  has  felt  the  courage  which  speaks  from 
Calvary  at  once  he  goes  on  to  feel  the  hope  which 
moves  triumphantly  right  through  the  whole  experi- 
ence of  agony.  Jesus  deliberately  followed  a  course 
of  action  which  He  knew  would  eventuate  in  His 
death.  He  might  have  planned  His  life  in  such  a 
way  as  to  avoid  the  whole  experience.  He  did  not  do 
this.  He  included  death  in  His  plan  for  life.  In  the 
deepest  possible  sense  He  could  say :  "I  have  a  ren- 
dezvous with  death."  And  this  means  that  He  felt 
that  it  was  worth  His  while  to  die.  It  means  that 
He  looked  out  hopefully  upon  the  future  of  men  and 
believed  that  His  death  would  elicit  such  an  ethical 
and  spiritual  response  as  to  justify  all  its  cost  in 
tragic  struggle  and  pain.  He  showed  His  belief  in 
the  response  of  human  nature  to  His  work  in  the 
most  astonishing  way,  when  He  held  fast  to  His  task 
and  included  death  in  His  task.  This  was  not  be- 
cause He  had  a  dreamy  and  poetic  view  of  human 
nature  which  had  never  faced  the  ugly  facts  of  life. 
He  knew  what  was  in  the  heart  of  man.  He  knew 
what  was  in  the  mind  of  man.  He  knew  what  came 
forth  in  the  life  of  man.  And  in  spite  of  His  famili- 
arity with  human  folly,  and  falseness,  and  wicked- 
ness He  cherished  a  heart  of  hope.  He  believed  the 
future  would  justify  the  risk  He  took  in  venturing 
life  itself  upon  the  altar  of  the  world's  good. 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS     1 25 

There  is  a  quality  about  this  faith  of  Jesus  which 
arrests  our  attention  and  seizes  upon  our  hearts.  We 
know  all  too  well  how  often  disillusionment  comes 
with  knowledge,  and  pessimistic  gloom  in  the  wake  of 
an  experience  of  the  full  pressure  of  the  evil  of 
human  life.  Sometimes  we  have  a  haunting  fear  that 
brave  and  candid  knowledge  would  make  cynics  of  us 
all.  Then  we  come  to  this  life  with  all  its  abandon 
of  moral  and  spiritual  adventure.  We  see  men  giv- 
ing back  hate  for  love,  and  conspiracy  and  malignant 
cruelty  for  gracious  and  self-forgetful  service.  We 
are  almost  afraid  to  look  into  His  face  after  all  that. 
We  are  afraid  that  He  too  will  have  lost  hope.  We 
are  afraid  that  we  will  find  lines  of  bitter  and  mis- 
anthropic disillusionment.  Then  at  last  we  gain 
courage  and  look  into  the  face  marred  more  than  any 
face  of  man.  It  is  indeed  full  of  lines  of  suffering. 
It  is  indeed  drawn  with  agony.  It  is  indeed  a  face 
which  tells  the  story  of  a  broken  heart.  But  the 
strange  miracle  of  it  all  is  that  the  hope  maintains  it- 
self right  through  the  heart-break.  There  is  not  the 
faintest  quality  of  cynicism.  There  is  no  suggestion 
of  bitter  pessimism.  Instead  there  is  the  glory  of  an 
immortal  hope.  When  life  has  done  the  worst  it  can 
do  to  Jesus  He  still  believes.  He  cherishes  an  uncon- 
querable hope.  And  that  hope  moves  out  from  Him 
to  make  its  way  into  the  hearts  of  sad  and  pressed 
and  tempted  men  in  all  the  world. 

But  there  is  something  beneath  the  courage.  And 
there  is  something  beneath  the  hope.  He  was  heroic 
enough  to  die.  He  was  so  full  of  hope  that  death 
seemed  the  open  door  to  achievement.    He  believed 


126  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

that  men  who  would  not  listen  to  the  eloquence  of  His 
life  would  be  mastered  by  the  silent  eloquence  of  His 
death.  But  the  thing  which  floods  it  all  with  a  glory 
like  a  purple  red  sunset  on  a  mountain  is  this:  He 
loved  men  so  much  that  He  really  wanted  to  make  the 
greatest  possible  sacrifice  for  them.  In  the  last  an- 
alysis it  was  not  the  Roman  power  which  crucified 
Jesus.  And  it  was  not  Jewish  hatred  hounding  the 
Romans  on.  It  was  the  passion  of  love  in  the  heart 
of  Jesus  which  fastened  Him  to  the  Cross.  It  was  a 
love  which  would  not  let  Him  go  anywhere  except  to 
Calvary.  Now  there  is  one  discovery  which  keeps 
brightness  in  the  darkest  places  of  the  world.  When- 
ever one  human  being  finds  that  another  human  be- 
ing loves  him  enough  to  suffer  for  him  it  changes  the 
whole  spirit  and  quality  of  the  experience  of  life. 
The  days  had  seemed  intolerable,  but  love  transfig- 
ures them.  If  some  one  cares  enough  for  you  to  bear 
his  life  to  the  hard  impact  of  pain  for  your  sake,  it 
gives  you  the  strength  of  ten  and  after  the  darkest 
night  it  sets  the  white  glow  of  morning  playing  about 
the  eastern  hills.  Slimy  and  foul  places  of  battle 
were  made  into  spots  bright  with  a  sort  of  apocalyp- 
tic glory  because  in  them  a  soldier  found  in  his  pal 
a  willingness  to  go  to  lengths  of  self-forgetful  risk 
and  suffering  for  him  which  bathed  friendship  in  a 
transcendent  radiance.  That  chum  may  be  buried  in 
France  to-day.  But  before  he  was  swept  out  of  life 
in  the  tempest  of  war  he  put  into  action  the  meaning 
of  the  high  love  of  a  man  for  his  friend.  And  the 
friend  who  thinks  of  him  to-day  wistfully  waits  for 
some  power  which  will  tune  life  to  the  lofty  key  of 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF   THE   CROSS      127 

that  experience.  He  finds  just  this  on  a  cross  where 
a  Man  died  long  ago  and  dying  set  a  new  standard  of 
love  for  all  mankind.  The  soldier  is  almost  startled 
to  find  that  the  greatest  thing  which  came  to  him  in 
France  is  waiting  for  him  now  on  Calvary.  The 
same  impetuous  love.  The  same  recklessly  self-giv- 
ing devotion.  The  same  marvel  of  loyalty  which 
plunges  into  pain  and  never  counts  the  cost. 

So  the  man  of  to-day  finds  an  immediate  point  of 
contact  with  Jesus.  Just  at  the  moment  when  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  unlovely  cynicism  of  the  early  days 
of  reconstruction  he  is  wondering  if  in  the  days  of 
peace  he  will  ever  again  hear  sounded  that  high  and 
awful  note  of  glorious  and  passionate  sacrifice,  he 
meets  the  supreme  sacrifice  of  history,  a  deed  which 
speaks  with  direct  and  summoning  power  to  the 
lonely  man  who  feared  that  the  world  had  never 
again  for  him  the  thrill  of  a  supreme  experience. 

All  these  things  can  come  to  a  man  who  believes 
that  Jesus  was  the  most  splendidly  comradely  and 
self-forgetful  man  in  all  the  world,  but  who  asks  no 
difficult  questions  about  His  person.  Catholic  and  Jew, 
Protestant  and  secular  man  of  the  world,  all  of  them 
can  find  this  immediate  and  vital  connection  with  the 
Man  who  included  a  cross  in  the  plan  of  His  life  so 
many  years  ago.  And  they  who  approach  Him  so 
must  feel  the  contagion  of  His  flaming  personality 
in  its  hour  of  sacrifice.  He  makes  some  things  won- 
derfully easier.  He  makes  some  things  amazingly 
harder.  There  is  something  inevitably  productive 
about  such  a  death.  It  sets  a  new  standard  which 
somehow  it  is  very  difficult  to  ignore.  It  is  as  if  you 


128  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

suddenly  see  the  heart  of  life's  meaning  and  you  can 
never  be  contented  to  have  it  mean  any  less. 

There  are  many  men  to  whom  this  contact  with  the 
supremest  of  the  sons  of  men  is  the  only  possible 
contact  to-day.  About  ultimate  and  difficult  ques- 
tions they  are  in  such  a  state  of  entanglement  that  if 
they  must  wait  until  they  can  make  tremendous 
credal  assertions  about  Jesus  before  they  come  to 
actual  relationship  with  Him  they  will  never  receive 
anything  gripping  and  potent  from  Him  at  all.  It  is 
important  that  we  should  understand  their  dilemma, 
and  it  is  important  that  we  should  appreciate  their 
perplexity  and  their  need.  It  is  extremely  important 
that  we  should  allow  the  Jesus  who  lived  among  men 
and  who  died  upon  the  cross  to  meet  them  where  He 
can  speak  to  them,  and  to  secure  their  friendly  alle- 
giance at  the  point  where  they  are  able  to  sense  the 
potency  of  His  appeal.  If  we  try  to  insist  that  Jesus 
shall  mean  nothing  to  a  man  until  He  can  mean  the 
sort  of  thing  He  means  to  the  most  clear-eyed  and 
understanding  saint  we  are  taking  an  attitude  of 
which  the  Master  would  not  for  a  moment  approve. 
A  real  connection  is  the  beginning  of  all  sorts  of  won- 
derful things.  And  we  have  no  ground  of  complaint 
if  the  connection  is  just  simple  and  direct  and  honest 
with  the  true  outreach  of  an  earnest  life  behind  it. 
It  is  a  great  and  fine  thing  that  in  these  days  of 
searching  of  mind  and  of  intellectual  confusion  there 
is  a  real  touch  of  the  life  of  Jesus  upon  human  life 
which  is  possible  quite  apart  from  credal  assertions 
and  all  the  vast  articulations  of  theology.  Indeed,  it 
may  be  that  the  contact  will  make  necessary  the  the- 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE   CROSS     1 29 

ology.  We  must  not  insist  that  the  theology  shall 
precede  the  contact.  The  death  of  Christ  speaks  in 
its  own  immediate  and  authentic  eloquence.  The  man 
who  reads  the  Gospel  story  with  open  mind  and  open 
heart  cannot  fail  to  feel  its  power.  And  it  is  aston- 
ishing the  fashion  in  which  it  will  begin  at  once  to 
produce  results  in  the  really  responsive  life.  The 
courage  and  the  hope  and  the  love  of  that  death  have 
an  immediate  and  compelling  and  imperative  appeal. 
The  travelling  physician  in  Robert  Browning's 
deeply  understanding  poem,  * '  Karshish, ' '  is  a  most 
interesting  personality.  He  rather  seems  to  belong  to 
the  modern  world  than  to  the  world  in  which  Jesus 
lived.  In  him  we  see  the  scientific  spirit  shrewdly 
and  accurately  observing  and  remembering  and  clas- 
sifying. We  see  the  tendency  to  push  past  the  inci- 
dental to  the  essential.  We  see  the  impatience  with 
superstition  and  make-believe.  And  this  man  is  con- 
fronted by  a  phenomenon  which  he  is  at  a  loss  to 
classify.  He  has  been  talking  with  one  Lazarus  re- 
garding whom  the  strangest  conceivable  sort  of  story 
is  being  told.  At  first  he  is  inclined  to  take  the  whole 
narrative  with  a  scornfully  disbelieving  mind.  But 
somehow  the  story  hangs  together  with  a  strange  air 
of  veracity.  And  somehow  the  man  himself  seems  to 
forbid  the  thought  of  deception.  Piece  by  piece  the 
travelling  physician  puts  the  elements  of  the  story  to- 
gether. At  last  he  has  a  complete  picture.  It  dazzles 
him.  It  amazes  him.  It  startles  him.  But  out  of  all 
the  impossible  strangeness  emerges  a  figure  speaking 
to  men  with  the  voice  of  God.  From  the  depths  of 
his  heart  you  feel  his  wonder  at  the  thought  that  it 


130  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

may  be  that  God  has  become  articulate  in  human  life. 
Perhaps  the  All  Great  is  the  All  Loving  too.  This 
story  if  it  were  true  would  make  it  so. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  wonderful  contribution 
which  the  death  of  Jesus  can  make  to  the  life  of  a 
man  who  is  moved  by  its  moral  and  spiritual  splen- 
dour without  ever  lifting  Jesus  from  the  human 
world  where  we  meet  Him.  If  Jesus  was  just  a  man 
He  has  this  power  to  seize  and  hold  the  mind  and  the 
conscience  of  other  men.  But  what  if  He  was  more 
than  man?  What  if  Peter's  confession  does  repre- 
sent however  vaguely  and  dimly  some  reality  ?  What 
if  Jesus  was  in  actual  and  amazing  and  effective 
fashion  God  in  human  life  ?  Would  it  make  any  dif- 
ference in  the  meaning  of  His  death  for  the  world? 
Would  it  increase  in  any  definite  fashion  its  power 
to  function  in  the  world?  We  are  discussing  the 
productive  beliefs.  Would  the  belief  in  Jesus  be 
more  productive  in  the  life  of  men  if  they  felt  with 
certainty  that  He  was  God  in  human  life?  Has  it 
been  so  ?    Can  it  be  so  ?    Will  it  be  so  in  the  future  ? 

We  must  move  towards  our  attempt  to  reply  to 
these  questions  with  one  assertion.  However  much 
more  than  man  Jesus  was  He  was  in  actual  and  genu- 
ine fashion  a  real  man.  And  no  belief  that  we  come 
to  have  about  Him  must  rob  us  of  His  true  humanity. 
Mary  wept  because  she  thought  that  they  had  taken 
away  her  Lord.  We  would  weep  almost  as  much  if 
we  thought  they  had  taken  away  our  comrade.  No 
one  who  is  true  to  the  manifold  evidence  in  the  Gos- 
pels can  for  a  moment  rest  in  an  interpretation  of 
Jesus  which  sacrifices  the  reality  of  His  human  life, 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF   THE  CROSS      131 

the  reality  of  His  human  struggle  and  the  reality  of 
His  human  victory.  If  He  was  God  in  human  life  He 
was  God  in  human  life.  If  He  was  God  become  man 
He  was  God  become  man.  There  was  no  seeming  and 
make-believe  and  pious  pretense  about  this  human 
experience.  It  was  actual  with  a  sincerity  and  can- 
dour and  definiteness  which  were  thoroughgoing. 
But  suppose  that  it  was  God  who  thus  broke  His  way 
into  human  life.  Suppose  it  was  God  who  looked  out 
of  human  eyes,  and  spoke  with  a  human  voice,  and 
held  out  human  hands,  and  struggled  and  worked 
and  hoped  and  feared  as  a  man.  We  are  not  lifting 
the  question  as  to  how  such  a  thing  could  be  possible. 
We  are  not  trying  to  find  a  recipe  for  the  incarna- 
tion. The  man  who  could  invent  a  formula  for  the 
incarnation  would  cease  to  be  a  man  and  would  be- 
come God.  And  in  any  event  we  are  testing  this 
belief  by  its  functioning  power  and  not  by  a  theo- 
logical or  philosophical  analysis  of  its  contents.  Sup- 
pose that  God,  having  His  own  divine  secret  of  the 
fashion  in  which  it  could  be  done,  did  get  into  human 
life.  Suppose  He  worked  as  a  man.  Suppose  He 
lived  as  a  man.  Suppose  He  loved  as  a  man.  Sup- 
pose He  flung  Himself  upon  the  Cross  in  a  passionate 
endeavour  to  save  men  from  themselves  by  the  power 
and  the  glory  of  His  sacrifice.  If  all  these  things 
were  true  would  it  make  any  difference  in  the  appeal 
of  Calvary?  Would  it  effect  profoundly  the  capacity 
of  the  Cross  to  speak  to  the  world  1 

At  once  we  must  say  that  it  would  make  this  dif- 
ference. Calvary  would  be  more  than  the  revelation 
of  the  love  of  a  good  man  for  other  men.    It  would 


132  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

become  the  revelation  of  the  love  of  God  for  men.  It 
would  not  prove  merely  that  a  good  man  was  willing 
to  be  hurt  for  other  men.  It  would  prove  that  God 
was  willing  to  be  hurt  for  men.  It  would  prove  that 
God  was  willing  to  die  for  men.  It  would  prove  that 
the  universe  itself  is  on  the  side  of  love.  It  would 
prove  that  God  is  not  merely  an  infinite  spectator 
looking  upon  human  passion  and  pain  from  afar.  It 
would  prove  that  God  is  a  participant,  that  He  has 
Himself  bent  under  the  burden  of  the  worst  life  can 
do  to  men,  that  He  has  felt  the  lash  of  circumstance, 
the  cut  of  malignant  hatred,  and  that  He  has  been 
wounded  unto  death  by  the  hard  and  inscrutable 
forces  of  selfishness  in  the  world. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  very  difficult  to  see  how 
we  can  continue  to  worship  a  God  who  is  just  a  dis- 
tant observer  of  human  pain.  If  there  is  a  God  with 
no  mark  of  a  wound  upon  Him.  If  there  is  a  God 
whose  infinite  serenity  is  untouched  by  all  the  bitter 
woe  of  men  and  women  in  the  world.  If  there  is  a 
distant  and  exquisite  splendour  of  divine  and  unruf- 
fled glory  whose  inner  security  has  never  been  in- 
vaded by  all  the  deadly  pain  of  human  life.  If  there 
is  a  God  without  a  scar  He  can  never  win  our  hearts. 
He  can  never  command  our  love.  He  can  never  draw 
us  with  the  marvellous  allurement  of  a  divine  self- 
sacrifice.  He  can  awe  us  by  the  thought  of  His 
power.  But  He  cannot  hold  us  with  eager  respect  for 
His  character.  Love  which  avoids  the  burden  of 
those  in  pain  is  not  true  love.  Goodness  which  does 
not  come  to  the  rescue  of  hard-pressed  weakness  is 
not  real  goodness.    If  God  keeps  to  His  infinite  far- 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS     133 

off  home  while  the  war  between  good  and  evil  is  being 
fought  out  with  terrible  suffering  and  hard-pressed 
courage,  then  He  is  not  a  God  we  can  worship.  He 
is  an  infinite  slacker,  who  resists  every  call  of  noble 
chivalry.  If  Jesus  is  God  in  human  life  then  God's 
own  character  is  vindicated.  God 's  own  love  is  made 
convincingly  real.  We  can  go  on  living  with  some 
sort  of  deep  possession  of  our  spirits  in  this  world  so 
full  of  pain  if  God  Himself  has  been  hurt.  But  the 
universe  itself  seems  to  mock  us  if  we  are  asked  to 
worship  a  God  whose  heart  bears  no  mark  of  deadly 
wound. 

After  all,  however  little  he  may  put  it  into 
sharply  expressed  thought,  the  boy  on  the  battle-field 
and  the  boy  who  has  returned  from  the  war  and  all 
the  men  and  women  of  this  torn  and  confused  age 
do  want  tremendously  to  know  what  God  is  like.  It 
is  splendid  to  have  good  people  in  the  world.  But 
what  kind  of  a  God  is  back  of  the  world?  If  you 
have  a  God  who  was  the  world 's  most  daring  volun- 
teer in  the  most  audacious  struggle  of  history  how  it 
quickens  every  noble  purpose,  how  it  stirs  and 
deepens  every  high  consecration.  If  the  boy  far 
from  home  can  worship  a  God  who  has  been  far  from 
home  it  simply  makes  everything  different.  And  if 
he  can  realize  that  a  virile,  forth-going  love  which 
scorned  to  count  the  cost  brought  God  Himself  into 
human  life,  then  the  world  can  never  be  a  hopeless 
spot  again. 

We  have  already  more  than  suggested  that  if  Jesus 
was  God  in  human  life  then  Calvary  is  not  merely  a 
revelation  of  human  courage.    It  is  a  revelation  of 


134  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

the  courage  of  God.  We  must  believe  that  God  never 
asks  anything  of  us  which  does  not  characterize  His 
own  life.  Now  there  is  just  one  way  by  which  the 
courage  of  God  can  be  made  completely  clear  to  men. 
And  that  is  by  His  coming  into  human  life,  under  the 
fierce  fire  of  temptation  and  hardship  and  suffering 
which  beats  upon  humanity,  and  then  letting  life  do 
the  very  worst  it  can  to  Him.  All  the  courage  of  all 
the  hard  campaigns  of  the  world  shrinks  before  the 
spectacle  of  that  daring  which  prompts  God  to  take 
all  the  risks  of  human  life  and  human  death.  Many 
a  soldier  before  his  hour  of  fierce  and  terrible  testing 
has  held  in  his  heart  an  anxious  question  which  he 
never  put  into  words :  Would  he  prove  ready  in  the 
hour  of  hard  onslaught  ?  Would  he  have  a  heart  of 
courage,  and  a  hand  of  boldness  when  the  great  de- 
mand came?  If  such  a  soldier  with  his  secret  tortur- 
ing question  comes  to  realize  that  God  Himself  re- 
fused to  remain  where  there  was  no  tremor  of  un- 
certainty and  no  terrible  pressure  of  demand,  but 
broke  His  way  into  the  pain  and  hot  cruel  conflict  of 
life  ready  for  wounds,  and  ready  for  death,  the  whole 
universe  becomes  a  friendly  and  homelike  place. 
There  may  be  terrible  fighting.  But  God  is  on  his 
side.  And  it  is  a  great  comrade  God,  who  knows  all 
about  the  demand  and  the  strain  and  the  danger. 
He  did  not  keep  away  from  the  trenches.  He  did  not 
avoid  the  front  line.  He  went  over  the  top.  He 
moved  across  No  Man's  Land  in  the  rush  of  the 
charge.  And  He  died  as  He  stormed  the  defenses  of 
the  foe.  A  God  as  brave  as  that  gives  ethics  an  abso- 
lutely new  meaning  in  the  life  of  men. 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS     135 

Then  if  it  was  God  in  human  life  who  died  upon 
the  Cross  we  come  to  have  an  absolutely  new  basis 
for  faith.  It  is  a  fine  experience  to  come  across  men 
who  believe  in  humanity.  It  is  good  to  believe  that 
the  greatest  and  the  best  man  who  ever  lived  be- 
lieved in  humanity.  It  was  a  splendid  leap  of  faith. 
It  rouses  us.  It  inspires  us.  But  after  all  men 
may  be  mistaken.  Men  have  been  mistaken.  Good 
men  have  been  mistaken.  And  if  the  men  of 
faith  have  made  a  mistake  what  a  wildly  hope- 
less world  it  is  in  which  we  live.  You  have 
mounting  human  dreams.  You  have  aspiring  human 
hopes.  But  life  laughs  at  them  all  at  last.  Life  turns 
in  contemptuous  scorn  from  these  impractical  ideal- 
isms. At  least  in  moments  of  doubt  and  fear  these 
thoughts  will  suggest  themselves.  And  the  torturing 
ugly  knowledge  of  the  evils  of  the  world  will  perpetu- 
ally tend  to  baffle  our  faith.  On  the  other  hand  if  we 
can  know  that  God  believed  deeply  enough  in  the 
capacity  of  humanity  to  go  all  the  length  of  passion- 
ate pain  represented  by  His  life  of  humiliation  in  the 
world  and  His  death  upon  the  Cross,  we  have  a  new 
platform  of  faith  upon  which  to  stand.  If  God  be- 
lieves in  humanity  our  doubts  are  discounted.  If 
God  has  faith  in  humanity  our  misanthropies  and 
our  cynicisms  are  discredited. 

God  has  no  illusions.  No  evil  deed  of  all  the 
wicked  and  brutal  and  slimy  deeds  which  have 
stained  the  life  of  mankind  has  ever  been  perpetrated 
without  His  knowledge.  No  evil  word  of  all  the  false 
and  treacherous  and  cruel  and  hating  words  which 
have  scattered  the  hurt  of  wrong  in  the  world  has 


136  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

ever  been  spoken  without  His  apprehension.  More 
than  this  He  has  known  the  heart  of  every  person 
who  has  ever  lived  in  this  earth.  He  has  followed  all 
the  winding  and  shameful  pathway  of  all  the  evil 
thoughts  which  men  and  women  have  cherished  with- 
out ever  framing  them  in  speech  or  sending  them 
forth  as  dark  and  corroding  deeds.  He  knows  all 
about  humanity.  And  if  in  spite  of  all  His  perfect 
and  expert  knowledge  of  the  evil  in  the  human  heart 
and  on  human  lips  and  in  human  actions  He  still 
believes  in  humanity  there  is  simply  no  standing- 
room  left  for  shattering  and  fundamental  doubt  re- 
garding the  capacity  of  mankind  for  good.  God  has 
faith  in  men.  God  believes  in  their  response  to  what 
He  does  for  them.  He  believes  they  are  worth  all  the 
daring,  suffering  adventure  of  the  Incarnation.  He 
believes  they  are  worth  all  the  sorrowful  doom  of  the 
Cross.  When  a  man  comes  to  his  hour  of  most  bitter 
personal  disillusionment ;  when  he  can  no  longer  be- 
lieve in  himself,  in  the  presence  of  the  Cross  where 
the  Son  of  God  risked  death  for  men,  he  begins  to 
doubt  his  doubt  of  himself  and  to  find  a  way  of  faith 
once  more  possible. 

If  God  believes  that  you  are  worth  Calvary  you 
cannot  quite  completely  doubt  yourself.  When  a 
man  passes  through  his  most  painful  experience  of 
the  falseness  and  treachery  of  other  men  and  the  sun 
seems  shrouded  in  the  black  cloud  of  human  faith- 
lessness, if  he  comes  into  the  presence  of  the  Cross 
and  hears  the  Son  of  God  say:  "Father  forgive 
them, ' '  it  comes  to  him  in  spite  of  all  his  furious  and 
angry  disappointment   that  beneath  the  falseness, 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS     137 

away  in  remote  corners  of  the  personality  there  is 
latent  and  potential  good  to  which  it  is  possible  to 
speak  and  from  which  one  may  hope  for  a  response. 
In  such  men  as  these  God  believed.  For  such  men  as 
these  Christ  died.  And  a  humble  hope  is  born  again 
in  the  human  heart.  In  spite  of  a  man's  knowledge 
of  his  own  worst  self  and  in  spite  of  the  worst  which 
he  knows  of  other  people  faith  triumphs  over  doubt 
and  misanthropy  and  gloom.  God  believes  in  men 
and  that  is  the  charter  of  human  faith. 

It  is  very  clear  then  that  the  belief  that  God  in 
human  life  met  the  shock  of  death  upon  the  Cross 
changes  and  deepens  and  strengthens  the  power  of 
the  Cross  to  grip  and  transform  the  lives  of  men  in 
a  way  to  which  words  can  do  scant  justice.  And  it  is 
clear  that  the  new  and  practical  functioning  power 
which  comes  to  the  Cross  through  this  belief  touches 
men  just  at  a  point  which  is  of  the  most  strategic 
significance  and  where  there  is  the  most  imperative 
need.  Calvary  transforms  God  from  a  remote  and 
dim  ethical  and  spiritual  splendour  into  a  present 
and  mastering  and  potent  reality  when  you  come  to 
understand  that  it  is  God  Himself  you  meet  upon 
the  Cross.  This  is  not  a  matter  of  barren  theological 
dialectic.  It  is  a  matter  of  the  most  vital  and  imme- 
diate importance.  It  brings  religion  down  from  the 
clouds  because  it  brings  God  down  from  Heaven.  For 
the  most  difficult  and  the  most  fundamental  problem 
of  religion  lies  not  at  the  point  of  making  the  thought 
of  God  intellectually  significant.  It  is  a  much  deeper 
thing  than  that.  It  has  to  do  with  the  matter  of 
making  the  thought  of  God  near  and  intimate  and 


138  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

gripping  and  practically  masterful.  "The  thought 
of  God  took  hold  on  him,"  cried  Arthur  O'Shaugh- 
nessey  in  that  effective  poem,  "St.  John  the  Bap- 
tist." 

And  that  is  just  the  difficulty.  How  is  it  possible 
to  make  the  thought  of  God  take  hold  on  men  f  How 
is  it  possible  to  make  God  an  experience  and  not 
merely  a  great  idea  ?  How  is  it  possible  to  bring  God 
within  the  reach  of  every-day  men  f  Now  the  thought 
of  the  Incarnation  when  it  has  seized  the  mind  and 
the  conscience  and  the  heart  does  this.  And  the  In- 
carnation speaks  its  deepest  and  most  compelling  and 
mastering  word  at  the  Cross.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  the  Cross  as  the  death  of  God  incarnate  is  the 
only  thing  which  can  keep  religion  alive  and  authen- 
tic as  the  race  advances  and  becomes  more  highly  ar- 
ticulated in  all  the  relationships  of  its  life.  Less  than 
this  will  be  too  thin  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the 
turbulent  and  urgent  experiences  of  men.  A  God 
who  can  break  His  way  into  human  life  on  a  passion- 
ate, brave  quest  of  suffering  rescue  is  the  only  God 
who  can  gain  and  hold  the  mastery  of  men.  Only  a 
God  who  has  lived  our  life  and  who  has  died  our 
death  can  do  for  us  all  that  we  need  to  have  done. 

Is  there  any  other  step  which  we  ought  to  take  in 
the  attempt  to  appreciate  the  productive  power  of  the 
Cross  ?  It  may  seem  that  there  is  none.  It  may  seem 
that  any  other  step  will  plunge  us  into  unreality 
and  artificiality.  It  may  seem  that  we  are  on 
the  edge  of  a  great  danger  to  which  many  men 
have  succumbed.  We  may  be  reminded  that  there 
were  centuries  when  multitudes  of  Christians  be- 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      1 39 

lieved  that  the  death  of  Christ  was  a  ransom 
paid  to  the  devil  and  we  may  be  scornfully  reminded 
that  such  a  belief  is  only  and  entirely  unethical.  We 
may  have  called  to  our  attention  hard  and  commer- 
cial theories  of  the  meaning  of  the  Cross  which  ring 
with  a  metallic  sound  as  they  speak  in  terms  that 
smack  of  commercial  exchange.  And  we  may  be  told 
that  all  this  endeavour  to  speak  of  Christ  '&  death  in 
the  terms  of  mathematical  equivalence  will  always  of- 
fend the  sound  and  wholesome  ethical  sense  of  men. 
We  may  be  informed  that  God's  own  character  has 
been  affronted  and  He  has  been  interpreted  as  a  sort 
of  infinite  and  bloodthirsty  tyrant  in  the  terms  of 
some  expressions  regarding  the  meaning  of  the  Cross. 
And  we  may  be  advised  with  sage  kindness  to  avoid 
the  regions  where  such  danger  lies.  We  have  no  de- 
sire to  risk  ethical  sincerity  for  the  sake  of  theological 
foolhardiness.  And  we  have  the  least  possible  desire 
to  attempt  to  make  respectable  any  conception  of  the 
Cross  which  has  a  hard  and  cruel  seed  of  error  at  its 
heart  or  which  is  a  piece  of  lifeless  mechanism.  But 
we  are  not  quite  clear  that  the  practical  question  is 
so  easy  and  so  simple  as  it  seems  to  some  of  those  who 
see  no  root  of  reality  anywhere  in  those  views  of 
Christ's  death  which  assert  that  He  did  something 
for  God  as  well  as  something  for  men. 

It  is  a  very  interesting  fact  that  that  open-minded 
and  daring  theologian,  Horace  Bushnell,  who  put  the 
heart  of  his  intellectual  life  into  the  noblest  attempt 
to  interpret  the  work  of  Christ  in  the  terms  of  its 
effect  upon  man  came  at  last  to  believe  that  in  a  very 
notable  and  far-reaching  sense  it  also  did  something 


140  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

for  God.  We  are  not  particularly  concerned  here 
with  his  daring  suggestion  regarding  self-propitia- 
tion, though  his  suggestion  that  it  is  always  easier  to 
forgive  a  foe  after  you  have  voluntarily  suffered  for 
that  foe  is  full  of  fertility.  We  are  interested  in  the 
fact  that  the  American  mind  which  probably  repre- 
sented a  combination  of  open  intellectual  hospitality 
and  fearless  ethical  enthusiasm  and  profound  spir- 
itual insight  unequalled  in  the  country  to  which  he 
belonged  did  come  to  feel  as  he  moved  along  the  path 
of  real  and  vital  experience  that  you  have  not  said 
the  last  word  about  the  Cross  until  you  have  come  to 
understand  that  it  had  a  mission  in  respect  of  God  as 
well  as  a  mission  in  respect  of  man. 

At  this  point  we  may  be  met  by  the  question: 
Suppose  all  this  is  true,  what  does  it  have  to  do  with 
the  productive  power  of  the  Cross  in  human  life  ?  It 
may  have  much  to  do  with  it  in  every  way.  For  it 
may  be  true  that  an  understanding  of  these  very  rela- 
tionships will  release  from  the  Cross  new  and  potent 
moral  and  spiritual  forces  upon  the  lives  of  men. 

Perhaps  we  can  best  approach  the  matter  in  this 
way.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  a  question 
whether  a  passionately  earnest  man  can  allow  God 
to  forgive  him.  Of  course  we  must  avoid  all  merely 
neurotic  and  overwrought  psychological  states  in  re- 
spect of  the  evil  in  the  human  heart  and  in  human 
life.  But  we  must  not  make  the  mistake  of  calling 
everything  which  makes  us  personally  uncomfortable 
neurotic.  And  we  must  not  escape  any  real  ethical 
issue  by  calling  the  feeling  it  arouses  overwrought 
and  unwholesome.    Some  men  have  a  way  of  escap- 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      141 

ing  into  physiological  psychology  whenever  their  con- 
science becomes  painfully  active.  If  we  successfully 
avoid  the  two  extremes  it  still  seems  clear  that  the 
moment  we  face  moral  issues  with  genuine  clarity  the 
question  of  how  a  spotless  God  can  have  anything  to 
do  with  a  spotted  humanity  is  one  of  extreme  diffi- 
culty. And  if  we  have  come  to  any  ample  vision  of 
the  meaning  of  moral  things  we  can  understand  the 
type  of  heroic  struggler  who  said  that  he  wanted 
actual  contact  with  God,  but  if  that  contact  would 
soil  the  life  of  God  he  would  rather  do  without  it. 
And  the  question  does  not  concern  itself  with  a  deli- 
cate and  effeminate  deity  not  robust  enough  to  come 
in  contact  with  the  vigour  of  human  evil.  It  does 
concern  itself  with  a  vision  of  the  nature  of  evil 
so  clear  and  solemn  in  its  apprehension  that  it  knows 
that  it  can  never  be  taken  as  a  matter  of  course  with 
God,  that  His  antagonism  to  the  very  principle  of 
evil  must  be  perpetual,  and  that  the  moral  integrity 
of  the  universe  must  be  protected  whatever  happens 
to  individual  men.  We  could  not  continue  to  wor- 
ship a  God  who  treated  His  own  conscience  lightly. 

Now  it  must  be  frankly  admitted  that  in  a  world 
of  mechanical  and  mathematical  relationships  there 
could  be  no  forgiveness.  The  laws  of  that  world 
would  move  on  in  unhesitating  and  perpetual  pre- 
cision and  there  would  be  no  changing  them  and 
there  would  be  no  interfering  with  the  method  of 
their  action.  But  in  a  personal  world,  in  a  world  of 
personal  relationships,  the  question  does  not  have  to 
do  with  the  satisfying  of  a  hard  and  fast  law.  It  has 
to  do  with  meeting  the  ethical  requirements  of  living 


142  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

beings  in  a  world  above  the  sanctions  of  mechanical 
interactions. 

Now  in  a  world  of  personal  relationships  you  are 
dealing  with  realities  of  experience  and  not  with  for- 
mulas. The  questions  are  lifted  from  the  realm  of 
formal  logic  into  the  realm  of  psychology.  This  itself 
is  a  tremendous  gain,  for  it  makes  it  possible  to  treat 
every  question  in  the  light  of  its  vital  relationships  in 
experience  and  not  in  relation  to  its  mechanical  con- 
nections in  a  mathematical  formula.  The  question 
ceases  to  have  the  rigid  form,  How  can  you  reconcile 
the  righteousness  and  the  love  of  God  f  It  takes  the 
more  intimate  and  genuine  form,  How  can  a  God 
who  is  righteousness  alive  and  love  alive  mediate 
these  two  powerful  passions  when  He  is  confronted 
by  the  problem  of  the  coiling  and  hissing  and  poison- 
ous evil  in  human  life  ?  And  even  this  question  must 
be  deepened.  We  must  not  think  of  God  apart  from 
the  infinite  richness  and  variety  of  His  life.  And  we 
must  understand  that  every  burning  passion  of  His 
infinite  life  is  part  of  a  complete  and  wonderful  or- 
ganism of  reality.  It  is  not  any  one  attribute  of  God. 
It  is  not  any  one  aspect  of  God.  It  is  the  totality  of 
God  in  rich  and  mastering  experience  with  men 
which  must  be  satisfied.  His  passion  of  love  would 
be  as  little  at  rest  as  His  passion  of  justice  with  any 
dealing  with  men  which  did  not  keep  all  profound 
ethical  interests  amply  protected.  It  is  against  this 
complete  and  ample  organism  of  divine  life  that  sin 
beats  itself.  And  when  we  understand  this  we  begin 
also  to  understand  that  evil  can  never  be  a  thing  to 
be  taken  as  a  matter  of  course  to  God.    It  is  an  inner 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      143 

tragedy  as  it  beats  against  His  life.  There  is  a  flash 
of  insight  into  all  this  in  the  New  Testament  phrase 
about  the  lamb  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world.  The  tragedy  of  sin  is  not  merely  in  the  exist- 
ence of  a  bad  man.  It  is  in  the  existence  of  a  broken- 
hearted God. 

One  of  the  profoundest  services  of  that  vigorous 
thinker,  Herman  Lotze,  was  to  bring  clearly  before 
our  minds  the  truth  that  personality  itself  is  action. 
The  insight  of  some  contemporary  thinkers  has 
brought  us  to  understand  more  clearly  that  the  hour 
of  illuminated  activity  in  the  personal  life  is  the  hour 
of  certainty.  In  the  very  nature  of  things  every  per- 
sonality whatever  the  range  of  its  life  cannot  be  satis- 
fied until  the  deepest  meaning  of  that  life  is  put  into 
action.  Now  even  the  beginnings  of  insight  into  the 
relations  of  a  personal  being  to  a  world  of  vivid  and 
concrete  experience  make  it  clear  that  God  can  never 
rest  in  relation  to  any  deep  actuality  of  experience 
until  His  whole  attitude  toward  that  experience,  the 
reaction  of  His  total  nature  to  that  experience,  is  put 
into  action.  And  when  you  come  to  the  disintegrat- 
ing and  shattering  experience  of  sin  in  human  life  it 
was  an  ethical  necessity  for  God  to  find  a  way  to  get 
into  action  the  whole  bearing  of  His  deep  and  mani- 
fold life  toward  that  blighting  tragedy.  A  static 
God,  if  you  can  conceive  of  a  static  God,  might  not 
have  such  an  inner  necessity.  But  a  God  whose  very 
nature  is  infinite  and  perfect  action  is  sure  to  find 
this  necessity  absolutely  imperative. 

When  you  approach  the  Cross  as  the  deed  of  God  in 
human  life,  and  as  you  approach  the  Cross  keep  clear 


144  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

in  your  mind  the  necessities  of  which  we  have  just 
been  speaking,  certain  matters  of  transcendent  mean- 
ing at  once  become  clear.  In  this  passionate  deed  of 
divine  rescue  you  have  God  Himself  in  action.  There 
have  been  many  places  where  a  part  of  God  was  ex- 
pressed and  many  ways  in  which  aspects  of  God's  life 
have  become  articulate.  In  the  Cross  you  have  the 
total  ethical  and  spiritual  life  of  God  in  action.  All 
the  rich  and  potent  passion  of  that  perfect  life  at  last 
gets  itself  expressed  in  matchless  fullness  in  the  very 
field  of  concrete  and  actual  experience.  This  is  no 
matter  of  brilliant  and  far-flung  ideas.  It  is  no  mat- 
ter of  ecstatic  vision.  It  is  as  definite  and  concrete 
and  real  as  experience  can  ever  be.  It  is  God  on  the 
field  of  history.  It  is  all  of  God  on  the  field  of  his- 
tory. The  white  flaming  fire  of  His  righteousness 
plays  with  high  ethical  splendour  about  that  deed  of 
lonely  suffering.  The  winsome,  tender,  beautiful  out- 
reach of  His  love  glows  like  a  golden  daybreak  even 
in  the  hour  of  darkness.  And  more  than  this.  A 
thousand  rich  and  potent  aspects  of  the  relation  of 
God  to  man  and  man's  defiling  evil,  and  man's  strug- 
gle and  man's  hope  are  lifted  from  the  realm  of  noble 
thought,  and  become  a  passion  of  intense  action  in 
the  Cross.  The  infinite  personality  has  found  a  deed 
which  expresses  the  very  essence  of  His  whole  rela- 
tion to  man  and  sin.  The  necessity  of  personality  to 
get  its  deepest  meaning  into  action  has  been  satisfied. 
And  this  very  profound  satisfaction  of  the  per- 
sonal necessities  of  the  life  of  God  is  at  the  same 
time  the  perfect  protection  of  all  ethical  relationships 
in  a  personal  world.    The  forgiveness  which  speaks 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      145 

from  the  Cross  is  not  the  evasion  of  conscience.  It  is 
the  expression  of  conscience.  Righteousness  is  more 
regal  than  any  merely  punitive  action  on  the  part  of 
God  could  ever  have  made  it.  The  nature  of  God  as 
ethical  love,  the  structure  of  the  universe  as  built 
upon  ethical  love  and  depending  at  last  on  the  sanc- 
tions of  ethical  love,  the  deep  and  essential  moral  and 
spiritual  integrities  of  the  universe  are  placed  where 
they  are  beyond  attack.  Forgiveness  itself  becomes 
the  supreme  expression  of  the  total  ethical  life  of  God. 
The  man  to  whom  these  things  become  vital  has 
simply  pressed  one  step  farther  in  that  relation  to 
God  which  makes  every  step  in  the  light  of  living  re- 
lationships and  no  step  at  all  in  the  light  of  a  merely 
mechanical  theory.  It  is  the  soul  of  God  which  is 
revealed  to  him.  The  Cross  itself  comes  to  have  a 
moral  decisiveness  and  a  moral  power  unknown  be- 
fore. That  agony  of  spirit  when  Jesus  allowed  the 
full  and  terrible  consciousness  of  what  sin  meant  to 
the  world  and  at  the  most  poignant  moment  of  the 
experience  was  shrouded  in  darkness  and  cried  aloud 
for  the  Father  who  seemed  lost  in  the  blackness  of 
evil;  that  brave  identification  of  Himself  with  men 
until  in  simple  and  true  spiritual  fashion  He  bent 
under  the  burden  of  the  whole  weight  of  human  evil ; 
that  willingness  to  go  the  whole  length  of  suffering 
pain  in  order  to  fling  into  life  itself,  in  order  to  make 
real  in  active  deed  all  that  wrong  means  as  it  recoils 
from  the  white  consciousness  of  God ;  all  these  things 
open  new  vistas  of  real  and  sympathetic  and  vital 
experience.  Sin  can  never  have  the  same  allurement 
again  to  a  man  who  has  come  to  any  real  apprehen- 


146  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

sion  of  what  it  cost  the  Son  of  God  upon  the  Cross. 
These  matters  all  have  to  do  with  the  vitalities  of  per- 
sonal experience.  None  of  them  have  anything  to  do 
with  the  rigidities  of  commercial  exchange.  It  is  the 
conscience  of  God  we  are  meeting.  It  is  the  heart  of 
God  we  are  coming  to  know.  It  is  God  Himself  who 
is  becoming  completely  and  transf ormingly  articulate 
in  the  great  deed  upon  the  Cross. 

We  know  now  that  He  actually  did  risk  every- 
thing. We  understand  now  that  the  spiritual  pas- 
sion of  the  Cross  was  infinitely  beyond  the  hurt 
of  physical  pain.  We  know  now  that  God  held  back 
from  nothing.  We  know  now  that  He  went  the 
full  length  to  get  into  man's  life,  to  bear  his  in- 
sufferable burden,  to  stagger  up  the  slopes  of  pain 
and  death  as  He  rescued  men  from  themselves.  This 
sort  of  a  God  completely  masters  us.  This  sort  of 
God  wins  such  allegiance  as  we  did  not  know  we  had 
it  in  us  to  give  forth.  We  give  ourselves  to  Him. 
We  are  His  forever.  We  will  follow  Him  on  any 
battle-field.  We  will  not  turn  back  from  anything 
when  He  says  ' '  Go  forward. ' '  We  know  what  Paul 
meant  when  he  said:  "I  can  do  all  things.' '  The 
Cross  as  the  complete  expression  of  God  in  action 
transforms  us  at  the  very  moment  when  it  satisfies 
the  deepest  necessities  of  the  divine  life. 

The  strategy  of  the  series  of  conceptions  which  we 
have  been  outlining  lies  in  these  features :  First,  In 
a  sense  they  are  not  so  much  conceptions  as  experi- 
ences, and  just  because  they  represent  the  reaction 
of  the  responsive  life  in  the  presence  of  the  great 
vitalities  of  the  Cross  rather  than  merely  the  move- 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      147 

ment  of  the  dialectically  inclined  mind  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Cross  they  have  a  certain  power  of  seizure. 
Such  beliefs  about  the  Cross  seem  very  much  more  a 
part  of  life  itself  than  a  part  of  a  mental  interpre- 
tation of  life.  They  have  the  promise  of  productive- 
ness just  because  of  this  intimate  and  penetrating 
relation  to  experience.  Second,  The  Cross,  as  we  have 
been  viewing  it,  has  power  to  meet  and  speak  to  a 
man  at  whatever  point  he  finds  himself  in  personal 
experience.  It  does  not  wait  for  him  to  have  certain 
well-defined  views  about  the  person  of  Christ  before 
it  begins  to  speak  to  him.  If  he  is  a  real  man  sincere 
in  the  midst  of  life 's  struggle  at  once  the  Cross  speaks 
to  him  in  the  terms  of  his  immediate  experience. 
And  as  he  advances  in  clearness  of  thought  and  full- 
ness of  theological  apprehension  the  message  of  the 
Cross  becomes  more  and  more  potent  until  it  becomes 
the  point  of  a  new  relation  to  God,  and  a  new  relation 
to  men,  and  a  new  relation  to  all  the  ultimate  sanc- 
tions of  experience.  And  at  every  step  in  the  intel- 
lectual advance  theology  itself  is  kept  warm  and 
human  and  sharply  ethical  by  being  kept  in  the 
closest  contact  with  the  actualities  of  human  struggle 
and  the  essential  and  structural  relations  of  person- 
ality. Third,  The  Cross,  as  it  appears  in  this  series 
of  conceptions,  is  quite  thoroughly  freed  from  that 
ethical  confusion  and  hard  mechanism  which  so  often 
leave  us  with  the  feeling  that  what  ought  to  be  the 
most  ethical  point  in  religion  is  the  most  ethically 
confusing,  and  what  ought  to  be  the  most  deeply  vital 
has  become  the  most  rigidly  mechanical.  There  is 
no  attempt  to  force  the  issue.    There  is  simply  the 


148  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

attempt  to  be  completely  loyal  to  the  deepest  and 
most  denning  facts  of  experience. 

A  journey  such  as  we  have  taken  if  it  is  merely  a 
process  of  far-reaching  ratiocination  may  be  unprof- 
itable enough.  But  if  we  take  our  own  warm  and 
palpitating  and  eager  hearts  with  us  every  step  of 
the  way,  if  we  insist  on  testing  every  forward  move- 
ment by  the  necessities  of  our  own  struggling  out- 
reaching  life,  if  all  our  work  is  illuminated  by  a 
mind  cleansed  through  moral  struggle  and  a  will 
ready  to  apply  the  test  of  action,  then  we  will  feel 
the  full  meaning  of  the  goal  which  we  finally  attain. 
For  such  a  journey  as  a  matter  of  ethical  experience 
and  not  merely  a  matter  of  philosophical  mountain 
climbing  will  give  us  a  vivid  and  mastering  experi- 
ence of  a  God  of  ethical  love  which  will  release  all 
the  potential  energies  of  our  own  nature  in  glad 
allegiance.  It  will  give  us  a  sense  of  all  the  ethical 
relationships  which  is  sharp  with  passion  and  pain 
and  noble  with  the  most  commanding  self-control. 
It  will  give  us  a  relation  to  men  glorified  by  the  new 
vision  of  the  possibilities  of  men  which  we  have  re- 
ceived at  the  Cross.  It  will  give  us  a  hope  for  the 
future  as  bright  as  that  high  optimism  which 
prompted  God  to  give  Calvary  to  the  world.  For 
practical  functioning  power  and  for  capacity  to  be 
nobly  productive  in  the  lives  of  men  the  Cross  be- 
comes the  supremely  dynamic  event  in  history. 

One  of  the  interesting  things  which  this  whole  an- 
alysis does  for  us  as  we  pursue  its  implications  is  to 
throw  light  upon  some  matters  which  had  seemed 
curiously  confusing.    We  begin  to  view  the  whole 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      I49 

matter  of  interpretations  of  the  Cross  in  the  light  of 
their  relation  to  the  personal  experiences  of  men 
rather  than  in  the  light  of  their  logical  contents 
alone.  We  begin  to  study  the  psychology  of  certain 
doctrines  and  not  merely  their  logic.  At  once  this 
enables  us  to  view  such  crude  beliefs  as  that  regard- 
ing Christ's  death  as  a  ransom  to  Satan  from  a  fresh 
angle.  We  begin  to  see  that  the  experience  back  of 
this  curious  view  was  more  significant  than  the  view 
itself.  In  an  age  not  given  to  close  introspection  and 
not  gifted  with  sharp  powers  of  ethical  analysis,  it 
became  evident  to  earnest  men  that  their  experience 
of  contact  with  the  Cross  was  an  experience  of  deliv- 
erance from  the  evil  which  had  dominated  their 
experience.  They  seized  upon  the  thought  forms 
nearest  at  hand  in  order  to  express  what  had  oc- 
curred in  their  inner  lives.  These  thought  forms 
offered  them  the  idea  of  a  ransom  to  Satan  and  they 
seized  upon  it  with  little  critical  inspection.  What 
they  really  got  from  the  view  was  that  the  Son  of 
God  had  done  for  them  what  they  could  never  have 
done  for  themselves.  And  it  was  this  central  matter, 
in  which  we  would  quite  agree  with  them,  which  was 
really  important  and  not  the  crude  form  in  which 
they  expressed  it. 

Later,  when  deep  and  rich-souled  men  tried  to 
express  their  sense  of  debt  to  the  God  who  had  spoken 
to  them  from  the  Cross  they  found  themselves  sur- 
rounded by  the  institutions  of  Feudalism.  Anselm's 
"Cur  Deus  Homo,,  has  the  mark  of  a  feudal  environ- 
ment upon  it  all  the  while.  And  so  with  those  figures 
of  commercial  exchange  which  for  some  of  us  have 


150  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

endangered  the  seizing  power  of  the  whole  doctrine 
of  the  Cross.  There  is  no  need  of  denying  that  crude- 
ness  of  thinking  has  done  vast  harm  in  making  the 
Cross  difficult  of  acceptance  for  minds  sharply  sensi- 
tive to  ethical  fair  play.  But  it  is  tremendously  im- 
portant to  realize  that  they  were  often  offended  by 
something  which  did  indeed  logically  belong  to  the 
position  which  they  attacked  and  yet  something 
which  had  not  been  at  all  in  the  thought  of  those  who 
were  unfortunate  enough  to  use  the  thought  form 
which  later  caused  offense.  Psychologically  they 
were  just  trying  to  find  effective  methods  in  which  to 
say  that  the  Cross  was  a  necessity  to  God  as  He 
moved  out  to  forgive  man  and  also  a  necessity  to  man 
as  forgiveness  became  ethically  productive  in  his  life. 
If  we  will  be  courageous  enough  to  press  back  of  the 
surface  of  many  a  crude  bit  of  thinking  to  the  ex- 
perience which  was  half  'blindly  groping  for  a 
method  of  expression  we  will  often  be  surprised  to 
find  that  although  the  mental  form  which  was  finally 
chosen  contains  much  which  offends  us,  the  experi- 
ence back  of  it  is  one  which  speaks  straight  to  our 
hearts  and  to  which  we  can  reach  out  welcoming 
hands. 

To  try  to  interpret  the  theories  of  the  Cross  apart 
from  men's  experience  in  the  presence  of  the  Cross  is 
to  move  in  a  course  of  brilliantly  aggressive  dialectic 
in  which  we  demolish  imaginary  foes.  We  first  cre- 
ate giants  and  then  we  slay  them.  And  often  nobody 
would  be  more  surprised  at  the  strange  things  we 
find  in  the  theories  than  the  men  who  originated 
them.     On  the  other  hand,  if  we  turn  from  verbal 


THE  VITAL  MEANING  OF  THE  CROSS      151 

criticism  and  move  with  vital  sympathy  we  shall  in- 
deed find  much  to  correct.  But  we  shall  also  find 
that  the  human  heart  in  the  presence  of  the  Cross  has 
made  its  way  with  surprising  success  in  the  terms  of 
varied  thought  forms.  And  we  shall  find  that  in 
many  a  theory  whose  form  is  repulsive  some  earnest 
man  was  just  trying  to  say  that  the  Cross  did  satisfy 
both  the  conscience  of  God  and  the  conscience  of  man. 

This  thing  ought  to  be  said  as  we  close  this  lec- 
ture. Whatever  our  view  of  Christ  the  Cross  is  pro- 
ductive if  we  listen  and  look  with  really  sincere  and 
responsive  lives.  But  if  we  look  about  among  the 
passing  ages  to  find  what  leaders  were  most  produc- 
tive, and  if  we  try  to  see  when  Christian  men  and 
women  were  most  resiliency  alive,  we  shall  find  that 
those  to  whom  the  Cross  cut  the  deepest  in  sharp 
ethical  surgery  and  those  who  felt  most  deeply  what 
a  great  thing  it  did  for  God  and  so  what  a  trans- 
formingly  ethical  thing  it  did  for  men,  have  been 
those  who  have  released  the  most  productive  moral 
and  spiritual  and  social  energies  among  the  men  of 
their  time.  Any  sincere  contact  with  the  Cross  will 
be  productive.  But  the  vital  power  of  the  Cross  ap- 
pears most  completely  and  most  potently  when  we 
view  it  in  the  light  of  the  highest  view  of  Christ  and 
the  most  masterful  view  of  what  it  did  for  God  and 
His  relation  to  all  the  ethical  sanctions  which  lie  back 
of  personal  life. 

The  path  to  the  Cross  through  experience  contin- 
ues to  promise  most  for  life  and  for  thought  as  well. 
Along  this  pathway  we  come  to  an  actual  renaissance 
of  religion  and  an  actual  reinterpretation  of  life. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  INFINITE  NEAR- 
NESS OF  GOD 


LECTURE  V 

THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD 

ONE  of  the  most  searching  and  testing  ques- 
tions which  can  be  asked  about  the  relation 
of  man  to  God  can  be  phrased  in  this 
fashion :  Is  there  any  such  thing  as  an  absolute  re- 1 
ligion  in  the  world?  There  are  many  methods  which 
may  be  used  in  the  attempt  to  answer  this  question. 
We  will  approach  it  from  the  standpoint  which  is 
fundamental  in  these  lectures  and  so  we  will  phrase 
it  in  this  way :  Is  there  any  religion  which  has  been 
and  is  so  completely  productive  in  the  world  that 
from  the  standpoint  of  practical  functioning  power 
itjjus  not  too  rnuch  to  call  it  anjibsolute  religion? 
We  are  all  ready  to  admit  with  much  heartiness  the 
presence  of  golden  gleams  of  truth  in  the  great  ethnic 
religions.  We  are  ready  to  study  them  with  a  new 
sympathy  and  with  a  new  and  friendly  understand- 
ing of  the  best  elements  which  they  contain.  But 
when  we  come  to  examine  them  in  just  this  fashion, 
we  find  it  necessary  to  add  after  we  have  spoken  our 
words  of  heartiest  appreciation,  that  Confucianism  is * 
a  telling  code  of  ethics  rather  than  a  religion,  that 
Buddhism  and  Brahmanism  are  based  upon  the  sur-r 
render  of  personality  rather  than  on  the  realization 
of  personality,  that  Mohammedanism  has  no  will  but 

155 


156  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

the  will  of  God,  and  that  it  has  a  code  of  morals 
which  debauches  even  Heaven. 

The  more  you  study  the  ethnic  religions  the  less 
possible  does  it  become  to  regard  any  one  of  them  as 
capable  of  satisfying  and  completing  the  outreach  of 
the  really  growing  and  advancing  moral  and  spir- 
itual life  of  the  world.  And  all  too  often  they  con- 
tain elements  which  would  lead  to  the  complete  disin- 
tegration of  anything  like  a  really  noble  and  ethical 
civilization.  When  we  turn  to  Christianity  at  first 
the  situation  seems  much  more  encouraging.  It  is 
I  clear  as  we  analyze  the  constitution  of  human  nature, 
and  the  constituent  elements  of  Christianity  that 
they  fit  together.  It  is  clear  that  Christianity  is  re- 
flated to  the  structural  needs  of  men  as  is  no  other 
religion.  If  by  an  absolute  religion  you  mean  a  re- 
ligion whose  inherent  and  defining  qualities  corre- 
spond to  the  essential  aspects  of  human  need  we 
begin  to  feel  that  you  can  call  Christianity  an  abso- 
lute religion.  All  our  study  of  the  functioning 
power  of  Christianity  in  the  previous  lectures  of  this 
series  but  emphasizes  this  fact. 

But  the  situation  is  not  so  simple  and  it  is  not  so 
easy  as  at  first  sight  appears.  There  is  a  series  of 
facts  which  may  well  seem  very  disconcerting  when 
we  turn  our  eyes  upon  them.  Let  us  begin  with  the 
fact  that  the  vast  majority  of  people  who  have  lived 
in  the  world  have  never  heard  of  Jesus  Christ.  Un- 
told multitudes  of  them  lived  and  struggled  and  died 
before  He  had  appeared  among  men.  But  even  since 
His  wonderful  life  and  all  the  matchless  splendour 
of  His  achievement  most  of  the  people  who  have  been 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        157 

born  into  the  world  and  have  made  their  way  through 
the  vicissitudes  of  this  human  existence  have  never 
heard  of  His  name.  But  let  us  press  the  matter  more 
closely.  Let  us  enter  those  lands  which  are  called 
Christian.  In  the  great  Christian  countries  of  the 
world  we  know  that  there  are  multitudes  who  have 
no  adequate  or  vital  understanding  of  that  wonderful 
life  and  death  whose  glory  has  brought  such  bright- 
ness to  the  world.  In  any  Christian  country  there 
are  untold  numbers  of  people  who  have  never  heard 
of  Christ  in  any  profound  or  real  way.  They  have 
heard  His  name.  But  to  hear  of  Him  in  any  ade- 
quate sense  is  not  merely  to  hear  His  name.  It  is  to 
come  to  some  real  apprehension  of  the  quality  of  His 
personality  and  of  the  meaning  of  His  life. 

When  we  put  the  matter  in  this  way  we  are  forced 
to  admit  that  every  city  in  every  Christian  land  has 
its  hordes  of  people  who  have  never  heard  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Let  us  press  the  matter  even  more  closely. 
We  know  that  vast  numbers  of  people  at  some  time  in 
their  lives  have  had  some  quick  and  penetrating  ex- 
perience of  understanding  of  the  appeal  and  the 
power  and  the  summoning  authority  of  Jesus  Christ. 
But  we  must  sadly  admit  that  all  too  many  of  these, 
like  the  rich  young  man  who  went  away  sorrowful, 
have  quite  failed  to  put  Him  in  command  of  their 
lives.  Sometimes  in  hours  of  quiet  and  introspection 
they  remember  with  a  sort  of  dim  wistfulness  the 
hour  when  the  Man  of  Galilee  became  real  and 
masterful  and  infinitely  alluring.  But  it  is  a  far-off, 
hazy  memory.  The  experience  did  not  succeed  in 
making  for  itself  any  place  of  mastery  in  their  lives. 


158  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

Now  is  it  possible  to  call  a  religion  absolute  when  the 
majority  of  the  people  who  have  lived  in  the  world 
have  never  heard  of  it,  when  the  majority  of  those 
who  have  formally  heard  of  it  have  never  understood 
it,  and  when  multitudes  of  those  who  have  under- 
stood it  have  quite  refused  to  take  it  seriously?  It 
is  evident  at  once  that  such  questions  are  very  pene- 
trating, very  difficult  and  very  perplexing. 

To  be  sure,  something  may  be  said  if  we  choose  to 
adopt  a  line  of  defense  which  begins  by  emphasizing 
the  significance  of  human  freedom.  "We  may  be  re- 
minded that  the  quality  of  a  medicine  is  not  discred- 
ited if  a  man  refuses  to  take  it  and  so  remains  ill.  You 
have  to  judge  of  a  remedy  by  what  it  does  for  those 
who  use  it  and  not  by  what  it  fails  to  do  for  those 
who  throw  it  away.  Man  is  a  free  person  in  a  free 
world.  If  he  turns  from  the  one  religion  which 
would  give  him  completion  and  peace  and  the  power 
of  potent  activity,  you  must  not  blame  the  religion 
for  his  recalcitrant  spirit.  You  cannot  say  that  a  key 
is  a  failure  if  a  man  refuses  to  put  it  into  a  lock.  In 
that  case  the  weakness  is  in  the  man  and  not  in  the 
key.  It  may  be  an  absolutely  perfect  key  for  that 
lock,  but  if  the  man  refuses  to  put  it  in  the  lock,  it 
simply  has  no  opportunity  to  function.  And  the 
folly  and  futility  of  the  situation  must  be  placed 
where  they  belong  in  the  life  of  the  man  and  not  in 
the  inadequacy  of  the  key.  Now  it  is  necessary  to 
admit  that  there  seems  to  be  something  of  real  impor- 
tance in  this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter  as  long  as 
you  are  discussing  men  and  women  who  have  had  a 
real  and  adequate  opportunity  to  come  into  contact 


THE   INFINITE   NEARNESS   OF  GOD         1 59 

with  the  personality  and  the  power  of  Jesus  Christ, 
who  have  heard  of  Him  in  that  deep  and  genuine 
sense  of  coming  to  apprehend  the  call  of  His  spotless 
and  loving  life  and  the  outreach  of  His  strong  and 
friendly  arms.  When  such  men  and  women  as  these 
deliberately  turn  from  all  which  He  offers  it  seems 
quite  fair  to  say  that  if  they  are  not  healed  in  the 
midst  of  life's  ethical  ills  it  is  because  they  have  re- 
fused to  take  the  medicine.  If  they  have  not  entered 
the  temple  of  religion  it  is  because  they  have  refused 
to  put  the  key  which  they  possessed  into  the  lock. 
There  is  much  tragedy  in  their  after  experience.  But 
there  is  nothing  about  it  which  militates  against  the 
assurance  with  which  the  most  careful  thinker  can, 
call  Christianity  an  absolute  religion. 

But,  unfortunately,  these  men  and  women  do  not 
exhaust  the  elements  of  the  problem.  What  about 
the  men  who  have  never  possessed  the  key  and  there- 1 
fore  have  had  no  opportunity  to  use  it?  What  of  the  ' 
people  who  have  never  had  the  medicine  and  there- 
fore have  had  no  opportunity  to  refuse  to  use  it? 
You  cannot  blame  a  man  for  failing  to  turn  a  key 
which  he  does  not  possess.  You  cannot  blame  a 
woman  for  failing  to  take  medicine  which  has  never 
come  into  her  possession.  Now  we  cannot  deny  that 
the  majority  of  people  who  have  inhabited  this  world 
have  never  had  an  opportunity  to  make  any  personal 
choice  in  respect  of  the  claims  of  Jesus  Christ.  They 
could  not  believe  on  Him  of  whom  they  had  never 
heard.  In  what  sense  can  you  call  a  religion  absolute 
which  has  never  come  into  conscious  connection  with 
the  majority  of  people  who  have  lived  in  the  world? 


l6o  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

Gladly  admitting  that  Christianity  possessed  just  the 
secret  which  all  these  multitudes  needed,  what  are  we 
going  to  do  with  the  fact  that  they  never  had  an 
opportunity  to  accept  it  ? 

The  more  we  study  this  situation  the  more  its  ne- 
cessities are  seen  to  crystallize  into  one  very  definite 
demand.  If  Christianity  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  ab- 
solute religion,  there  must  be  some  actual  and  deci- 
sive fashion  in  which  the  Christian  God  has  had  ac- 
cess to  the  inner  life  of  all  the  people  who  have  never 
heard  of  Jesus  Christ  as  well  as  just  this  sort  of 
'access  to  those  who  know  the  compulsion  of  Chris- 
tianity as  an  historic  religion.  The  immanence  of 
God  must  mean  the  presence  of  God  in  every  human 
life  at  the  exact  point  of  its  most  critical  struggle  and 
its  most  far-reaching  decision.  The  Holy  Spirit,  to 
use  the  intimately  Christian  vernacular,  must  medi- 
ate the  deepest  ethical  and  spiritual  life  of  the  whole 
race,  under  the  terms  of  all  the  bewildering  variety 
of  custom  and  thought  and  feeling  and  religion. 

It  will  be  worth  our  while  to  take  a  careful  and 
analytical  survey  of  that  thought  of  the  immanence 
of  God  which  answers  to  the  necessities  of  the  case, 
and  to  see  something  of  its  relation  to  the  whole  prob- 
lem of  human  life  and  struggle.  In  doing  this  we 
will  be  following  to  some  of  its  ultimate  meanings 
that  New  Testament  suggestion  expressed  in  the 
words  regarding  the  light  which  lighteth  every  man 
coming  into  the  world. 

We  will  begin  with  a  simple  but  far-reaching  asser- 
tion. The  God  whom  we  worship  through  Jesus 
Christ  has  been  in  the  world  always.    It  is  not  merely 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        l6l 

that  He  made  the  world,  though  this  is  a  part  of  the 
whole  and  wonderfully  articulated  reality  of  the 
situation.  Prom  the  standpoint  of  our  present  ap- 
proach the  matter  in  emphasis  is  this.  God  is  the\ 
constantly  and  immediately  present  personal  com-| 
panion  of  every  human  being  who  has  ever  lived  in  r 
the  world.  He  has  always  been  nearer  than  breath- 
ing and  closer  than  hands  or  feet.  To  live  in  the 
world  at  all  is  to  have  a  definite  and  prolonged  con- 
tact with  the  God  who  is  infinitely  near  to  us  all. 
Now  the  strategic  thing  about  this  nearness  in  rela- 
tion to  unfolding  and  developing  human  life  lies 
just  in  the  fact  that  God  does  not  come  in  a  hard  or 
mechanical  way,  forcing  His  entrance  into  the  life. 
He  enters  so  quietly  and  so  simply  that  it  is  quite 
possible  for  human  beings  to  have  no  suspicion  that 
He  is  there.  He  always  assumes  the  point  of  view  of 
the  man  or  woman  in  whose  life  He  is  working.  He 
comes  within  the  circle  of  their  heredity.  He  comes 
within  the  circle  of  their  environment.  He  comes 
within  the  circle  of  all  those  intimate  and  personal^ 
things  which  make  the  individual  life  just  what  it  is. 
It  is  all  done  with  such  wonderful  and  self-effacing 
assumption  of  the  very  quality  of  the  personal  life  in 
which  He  is  working  that  His  voice  seems  but  the 
deepest  voice  of  the  nature  of  the  human  being  whose 
life  He  is  so  profoundly  touching. 

The  immense  effectiveness  of  all  this  lies  in  the 
fact  that  it  enables  God  to  mediate  the  deepest  life 
of  every  human  being.  If  He  demanded  a  certain  in- 
tellectual standard  then  it  would  only  be  possible  for 
Him  to  work  in  lives  which  conformed  to  that  stand- 


162  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

ard.  If  He  demanded  the  meeting  of  any  external 
test  of  any  kind  only  a  part  of  the  human  race  could 
meet  it.  But  just  because  He  adjusts  Himself  to 
every  conceivable  limitation  of  race  and  custom  and 
thought  and  feeling  and  assumes  the  actual  quality 
of  each  life  in  which  He  works,  it  is  possible  for  Him 
to  work  with  conviction  and  authenticity  in  every 
human  life.  Very  often  we  are  unconvinced  by  a 
very  eloquent  speech  because  the  speaker  is  all  the 
while  assuming  things  which  we  are  not  willing  to 
grant.  He  never  captures  us  because  he  never  comes 
near  enough  to  us.  In  the  deep  and  far-reaching 
work  of  which  we  are  speaking  God  gains  the  pre- 
liminary advantage  of  a  perfect  strategy  by  means  of 
speaking  to  each  individual  life  in  the  terms  of  its 
lown  thought,  its  own  experience  and  its  own 
struggle. 

What  is  it  which  this  voice  speaks  forth  in  the  in- 
terior of  every  human  life  in  the  world?  The  an- 
swer to  this  question  is  a  matter  of  the  most  striking 
significance.  This  potent  inner  voice  perpetually 
presses  every  human  being  in  all  the  world  toward 
the  doing  of  the  things  which  he  believes  are  good 
and  away  from  doing  the  things  which  he  believes 
to  be  evil.  It  is  a  sort  of  inner  ethical  ally  con- 
tinually advocating  the  judgments  of  a  man's  best 
self,  and  discounting  the  judgments  of  his  worst 
self.  It  is  perpetually  encouraging  a  man  to  make  a 
fight  for  the  things  which  have  commended  them- 
selves to  his  judgment  as  good,  and  against  the  things 
which  have  seemed  in  his  judgment  to  be  evil.  It  is 
an  insistent  voice.     It  is  a  masterful  voice.     It  is  a 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        1 63 

voice  which  speaks  from  so  deep  a  place  in  a  man's 
life  that  it  seems  to  be  the  voice  of  his  own  best  self. 
It  is  the  voice  of  conscience.  It  is  the  voice  of  the 
immanent  God.  And  every  moral  fight  is  made  in 
relation  to  the  word  of  command  which  this  voice 
speaks.  And  every  moral  victory  comes  from  fol- 
lowing its  behests. 

Now  this  work  of  God  is  as  vast  and  diversified 
as  the  human  race  itself.  It  goes  on  in  the  midst  of 
the  most  naive  and  simple  forms  of  barbarous  wor- 
ship. It  goes  on  in  the  midst  of  the  complex  sanc- 
tions of  the  most  highly  evolved  and  intricately 
articulated  of  the  ethnic  religions.  Everywhere  that 
men  live,  and  everywhere  that  men  have  lived  this 
quiet  penetrating  voice  has  entered  into  the  holy  of 
holies  of  the  individual  spirit  to  speak  of  the  best  in 
the  terms  of  that  very  unfolding  life.  It  is  infinitely 
sympathetic.  It  is  infinitely  understanding.  But 
it  is  quite  definitely  unflinching  in  making  the  de- 
mand that  the  call  of  the  good  be  heeded  and  the  call 
of  evil  be  refused. 

The  wonderful  patience  and  the  deft  psychological 
adjustment  of  this  world-wide  work  of  the  infinite 
God  in  His  immanent  relations  is  illustrated  by  the 
fashion  in  which  His  demand  in  every  life  is  adjusted 
by  the  nicest  scale  of  measurement  to  the  actual  § 
thought  and  mental  and  moral  outlook  of  each  indi-»/ 
vidual.  This  is  what  makes  it  all  so  wonderfully  fair. 
No  man  is  asked  to  be  loyal  to  the  insight  which 
would  have  come  to  another  man  in  another  set  of 
experiences.  No  man  is  asked  to  act  upon  a  set  of 
principles  which  in  his  state  of  development  he  would 


1 64  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

find  it  impossible  to  comprehend.  Each  man  is  met 
just  where  he  is  living.  Each  man  is  met  just  where 
he  is  thinking.  Each  man  is  met  at  just  that  spot  of 
glowing  light  where  his  own  mind  dealing  with  his 
own  experience  sees  something  that  is  good,  and  some- 
thing that  is  evil.  And  in  exactly  this  situation  he 
is  asked  to  be  loyal  to  the  good  and  to  spurn  the  evil. 
From  this  standpoint  we  can  understand  the  distinc- 
tion which  Jesus  made  in  respect  of  sin  against  Him- 
self and  sin  against  the  Holy  Spirit.  A  man  might 
sin  against  Jesus  because  he  did  not  understand  Him, 
because  he  had  never  felt  the  compelling  authenticity 
of  His  claims.  But  when  a  man  sins  against  the  Holy 
Spirit  he  is  turning  from  that  deep  voice  which 
rises  from  the  very  heart  of  his  own  experience.  To 
turn  from  Jesus  may  be  the  result  of  misconception. 
To  turn  from  the  voice  which  in  the  depths  of  our 
own  soul  calls  us  to  do  the  thing  we  know  is  good  and 
to  refuse  to  do  what  we  know  is  evil  is  to  court  the 
most  fundamental  ethical  and  spiritual  disaster. 

When  we  have  once  come  to  apprehend  the  mean- 
ing of  this  far-flung,  world-wide  work  of  the  imma- 
nent God,  we  will  develop  a  new  feeling  about  all 
life.  We  will  have  a  new  courage  and  a  new  hope 
and  a  new  patience  and  a  new  quiet  assurance. 
i  Knowing  that  God  is  everywhere  at  work  we  will 
have  a  new  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  human  life, 
and  a  new  sense  of  the  meaning  of  moral  and  spiri- 
tual struggle.  And  the  knowledge  of  that  infinite 
and  friendly  sympathy  which  causes  the  immanent 
God  to  meet  every  man  and  woman  and  child  upon 
the  very  plane  where  the  life  of  that  individual  is 


THE   INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        165 

being  lived  will  give  us  a  new  understanding  of  the  I 
spirit  and  the  method  in  which  the  most  penetrating 
work  among  men  must  be  done. 

We  must  not  think  of  any  nation  then  as  godless  ) 
in  the  sense  that  God  is  not  working  there.  We  must 
not  think  of  any  people  as  without  the  presence  and 
the  activity  and  the  help  of  that  friendly  God  in 
whom  indeed  we  all  live  and  move  and  have  our  be- 
ing. For  it  is  indeed  true  that  He  is  not  far  apart 
from  any  one  of  us.  You  can  get  through  the  world 
and  miss  its  culture.  You  can  get  through  the  world 
and  miss  its  wealth.  You  can  go  through  the  world 
and  miss  manifold  experiences  and  relationships. 
You  cannot  go  through  the  world  and  miss  God. 

But  this  is  only  the  first  assertion  which  it  is 
necessary  to  make  about  the  immanent  God.  Imme- 
diately there  is  more  to  follow.  For  sooner  or  later 
God  working  from  within  does  a  most  astonishing 
thing  in  every  human  life.  He  forces  each  man  to  1 
come  to  the  place  where  he  must  definitely  decide  for  ( 
or  against  the  best  which  he  knows.  He  does  not 
bring  a  man  to  the  place  where  he  must  decide  for 
or  against  the  best  which  somebody  else  knows.  He 
does  not  force  him  to  decide  for  or  against  a  ready 
made  standard  which  God  Himself  offers  in  its  com- 
pleteness and  perfection.  Moving  within  the  forms 
of  the  man's  own  thought  and  feeling  and  experience 
He  makes  it  necessary  for  him  to  take  sides  with  the 
best  he  finds  in  his  own  nature,  or  with  the  worst 
which  he  finds  there.  In  this  hour  of  tremendous 
strategy  a  man  is  not  asked  what  he  believes  ?  That 
is  a  very  important  question  in  many  relations  but 


166  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

ill  this  precise  situation  it  does  not  go  deeply  enough. 
A  man  is  asked  the  one  fundamental  and  searching 
question.  And  this  is  the  question:  Underneath  all 
your  beliefs,  underneath  all  of  your  activities,  what 
do  you  actually  mean  in  life  ?  What  is  your  funda- 
mental intention  in  respect  of  life?  What  is  your 
deepest  and  most  mastering  motive? 

Men  may  think  correctly  and  be  fundamentally 
false.  Men  may  be  responsible  for  many  noble  ac- 
tions with  selfish  and  evil  motives  back  of  them  all. 
But  what  a  man  means  as  to  life  is  the  really  telling 
and  denning  matter.  It  actually  expresses  the  char- 
acter of  the  man.  It  is  and  it  deserves  to  be  a 
matter  of  destiny.  And  the  great  and  actively  pres- 
ent God  grasping  a  man  in  His  own  supreme  strength 
holds  him  to  the  necessity  of  decision.  He  does  not 
force  him  to  decide  in  some  particular  way.  But  He 
does  make  it  imperative  that  the  man  use  his  preroga- 
tive of  decision.  And  if  under  the  pressure  the  man 
uses  all  the  force  of  his  personality  to  avoid  decision, 
he  only  does  this  by  so  definite  and  masterful  a 
choice  that  this  in  itself  commits  him  to  a  scornful 
repudiation  of  the  deepest  moral  and  spiritual  de- 
mand which  expresses  itself  in  his  own  nature.  We 
must  keep  sharply  in  mind  that  all  this  does  not  have 
to  do  with  some  hard  and  fast  demand  brought  to  him 
from  without.  It  has  to  do  with  a  demand  which 
arises  and  takes  its  form  in  the  closest  connection 
with  the  very  structure  of  his  individual  life  and  the 
actual  quality  of  his  experience.  And  if  the  man  is 
in  such  a  situation  through  evil  environment  or 
through  unhappy  heredity  that  the  very  functioning 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        167 

power  of  his  will  is  depleted  the  immanent  God  pro- 
tects the  validity  of  his  personal  life  by  making  him 
capable  of  clear  cut  decision.  The  sovereignty  of 
God  comes  to  one  of  its  most  wonderful  forms  of 
expression  in  just  the  fashion  in  which  He  reinforces 
depleted  personalities  and  makes  them  capable  of  the 
great  decision.  This  reinforcement  does  not  rob  a 
man  of  freedom.  It  secures  his  freedom.  It  saves 
him  from  those  forces  which  would  make  him  in- 
capable of  choice,  but  it  does  not  prescribe  the  direc- 
tion in  which  his  choice  shall  move. 

The  literature  of  the  world  is  full  of  examples  of 
the  fashion  in  which  men  have  come  to  critical  mo- 
ments and  have  opened  their  lives  to  the  potency  of 
a  power  of  inner  strength  which  came  within  their 
reach  and  so  went  forward  to  deeds  of  which  they 
themselves  would  have  deemed  their  spirits  in- 
capable. There  are  invisible  moral  and  spiritual 
reinforcements  within  reach  of  us  all.  But  the  de- 
cisively important  matter  is  just  the  fashion  in  which 
every  human  being  who  lives  to  maturity  finds  some 
sort  of  fundamental  choice  inevitable.  You  cannot 
escape  from  the  necessity  of  that  choice  any  more 
than  Jonah  in  the  fine  Old  Testament  parable  could 
escape  from  God  by  journeying  off  to  the  other  side 
of  the  world. 

Here  then  is  an  ethical  crisis  and  an  ethical  out- 
come as  widely  diffused  as  the  existence  of  the  hu- 
man race  on  this  planet.  It  can  come  in  the  terms 
of  any  one  of  the  ethnic  religions.  It  can  come 
where  there  is  no  formal  religion  at  all.  It  comes  in 
the  very  terms  of  a  man's  own  life.     It  rises  from 


1 68  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

the  very  nature  of  his  personal  experiences.  It  does 
not  come  with  an  external  pressure  from  without. 
It  expresses  its  sanctions  from  within,  and  it  does 
this  with  the  most  complete  and  detailed  adjustment 
to  the  quality  of  his  own  individuality.  The  crisis 
comes  in  an  infinite  variety  of  ways.  It  has  the 
greatest  difference  in  form.  But  at  heart  it  is  al- 
ways the  same.  And  the  heart  of  it  is  the  necessity 
that  every  man  decide  for  or  against  the  best  he 
knows. 

A  savage  in  the  jungles  may  fight  his  way  through 
this  crisis  in  the  terms  of  some  of  the  sanctions  of 
the  tribal  customs.  A  lad  in  the  slums  of  a  great 
city  may  meet  it  as  he  discharges  to  the  full  his  sense 
of  obligation  to  be  loyal  to  his  gang.  A  Confucianist 
in  all  the  involved  relationships  of  his  life  may  move 
through  the  crisis  in  a  new  apprehension  of  what  is 
involved  in  loyal  reverence  for  his  ancestors.  A 
professional  criminal  whose  whole  life  has  been  lived 
apart  from  the  summons  of  the  normal  demands  of 
civilization  may  come  to  the  place  where  the  deepest 
and  highest  meaning  of  his  life  is  expressed  in  taking 
the  most  desperate  risks  in  order  to  be  completely 
faithful  to  a  pal.  The  Mohammedan  soldier  in  many 
an  age  has  found  the  thing  of  which  we  are  speaking 
in  an  abandonment  of  his  whole  personality  to  deeds 
of  courage  in  behalf  of  the  Crescent.  A  tortured 
ascetic  has  found  it  in  deliberately  following  his  way 
of  cruel  pain  because  this  represented  the  highest 
summons  of  which  his  life  had  felt  the  power.  A 
zestful  Old  Testament  legalist  found  it  in  obedience 
to  that  law  which  he  made  his  meditation  day  and 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        169 

night.  Benedict  found  it  in  a  monastic  life.  St. 
Francis  found  it  in  a  life  of  singing,  tender,  self- 
forgetful  service.  The  Crusader  found  it  in  fighting 
the  Infidel.  The  Saracen  soldier  found  it  in  fighting 
the  Crusader.  The  reformer  finds  it  in  a  life  given 
over  to  the  expression  of  his  social  passion.  The 
patriot  finds  it  in  self-giving  for  his  country.  And 
all  of  these  vastly  diversified  experiences  have  this 
in  common.  Each  man  comes  to  the  place  where  his 
highest  and  most  commanding  ideal  summons  him. 
And  each  man  decides  to  follow  the  summons.  And 
the  immanent  God  is  the  perpetually  active  agent  in 
pressing  men  into  the  place  where  they  must  take  a 
final  and  definite  attitude  toward  the  very  best  they 
know. 

The  deepest  tragedy  of  life  is  involved  in  a  man 's 
failure  to  rise  to  this  great  test.  In  respect  of  him 
we  may  indeed  use  the  words  of  Dante,  he  has  been 
guilty  of  the  great  refusal.  And  the  perilous  thing 
about  the  deliberate  turning  from  the  most  master- 
ing ethical  ideal  which  speaks  in  one's  own  life  is 
just  this.  It  is  a  part  of  the  process  of  the  death 
of  good  in  the  human  soul.  You  can  fail  to  be  loyal 
to  another  man's  ideal  without  this  danger  exactly 
because  it  does  not  represent  the  deepest  thing  in 
your  own  soul.  But  when  a  man  deliberately 
repudiates  the  one  deepest  sense  of  moral  sanction 
and  summons  in  his  own  life  he  has  begun  to  cut 
the  nerve  of  reality  in  his  personality.  The  process 
which  sets  in  leads  to  the  decay  of  interest  in  all 
moral  and  spiritual  things.  It  leads  to  an  incapacity 
to  respond  to  any  ethical  summons.     It  is  the  dis- 


170  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

integration  of  the  ethical  fiber  of  the  manhood.  And 
in  its  last  analysis  it  is  unforgivable  in  the  very 
literal  sense  that  it  is  incapable  of  desiring  forgive- 
ness. It  is  godless  in  the  sense  that  it  has  become 
incapable  of  responding  to  the  experience  of  fellow- 
ship with  God.  It  is  lost  in  the  very  dreadful  sense 
that  it  can  never  want  to  be  found.  Moral  distinc- 
tions at  last  cease  to  have  any  meaning  for  the  life. 
It  is  capable  of  pain.  But  it  is  not  capable  of  regret. 
It  is  capable  of  suffering.  It  is  not  capable  of  that 
ethically  productive  suffering  which  leads  to  re- 
pentance. It  is  not  so  much  that  it  goes  to  hell  as 
that  it  becomes  hell.  For  once  the  old  Persian  poet 
so  often  wrong  was  exactly  right. 

"  I  sent  my  soul  into  the  invisible 
Some  letter  of  that  after  life  to  spell. 
And  by  and  by  my  soul  returned  to  me 
And  whispered,  'I  myself  am  heaven  and  hell.'" 

In  other  words,  the  dark  ethical  tragedy  of  life 
must  not  for  one  moment  be  said  to  consist  in  the 
failure  to  accept  a  creed  of  whose  meaning  a  man 
may  not  have  had  the  slightest  comprehension.  The 
test  on  which  eternity  hangs  cannot  for  a  moment  be 
said  to  be  a  man's  personal  attitude  toward  a  per- 
sonality of  whom  he  has  never  heard.  The  basis  on 
which  the  really  far-reaching  issues  are  decided  for 
all  the  race  can  never  be  the  attitude  of  all  men  to- 
ward some  ecclesiastical  system  of  whose  very  ex- 
istence most  of  them  are  ignorant.  But  there  is  a 
perfectly  fair  test.  There  is  a  perfectly  honest  test. 
There  is  a  perfectly  right  test.    What  has  a  man  done 


THE   INFINITE  NEARNESS   OF  GOD         171 

with  his  own  deepest  sense  of  duty?  What  has  he 
done  with  the  ideal  which  compelled  him  from  within  ? 
What  has  he  done  with  that  good  of  which  he  has 
heard  and  whose  meaning  and  implications  he  knows 
ngnt  well?  Has  he  decided  to  be  loyal  to  the  best 
he  knows?  Has  he  decided  to  spurn  with  angry 
scorn  the  best  he  knows  ?  The  immanent  God  Himself 
presses  home  these  questions.  And  upon  the  answer 
hang  the  most  far-reaching  matters  of  personal 
destiny. 

Now  let  us  follow  the  advancing  way  of  the  man 
who  decides  to  answer  the  ethical  call.  Let  us  see 
what  happens  to  the  man  who  decides  to  follow  the 
best  he  knows.  Let  us  walk  in  the  steps  of  that  pil- 
grim of  the  ideal  who  hears  the  call  from  the  heights 
and  rises  gladly  to  obey.  The  moment  a  man  de- 
cides with  all  his  mind  and  with  all  his  heart  to  take 
the  moral  demands  of  his  own  nature  seriously  a  most 
extraordinary  thing  happens.  The  immanent  God  at 
once  begins  to  expand  the  circle  of  a  man's  ethical 
apprehensions.  As  fast  as  he  does  the  things  which 
he  knows  are  good  he  discovers  more  things  which 
are  good.  To  paraphrase  the  deft  words  of  Samuel 
Crothers:  "As  fast  as  he  lives  up  to  his  light  more 
lights  are  turned  on."  The  way  grows  brighter  all 
the  while.  But  it  becomes  too  painfully  bright.  It 
becomes  dazzling.  It  becomes  burning.  Fire  may  be 
a  comfortable  thing,  but  not  conflagration.  The 
more  the  man  goes  forth  in  ardent  and  eager  activity 
on  the  quest  of  loyal  obedience  to  his  ideal  the  more 
that  ideal  demands,  until  at  last  it  seems  that  he  will 
be  completely  crushed  by  the  burden  which  he  is 


172  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

bearing.  He  believes  that  there  is  a  spot  where  the 
ideal  touches  the  real.  And  he  goes  forth  to  search 
for  it.  He  believes  that  the  rainbow  touches  the 
earth  somewhere  and  he  goes  forth  to  find  that 
spot.  But  the  faster  he  travels  and  the  more 
weary  his  feet,  the  farther  off  is  the  goal  of 
his  ideal.  He  simply  cannot  catch  up  with  his 
dream  of  what  he  ought  to  be.  He  cannot  capture 
his  dream  of  his  own  manhood.  To  use  the  word 
of  that  penetrating  ethical  thinker,  Dr.  Olin  A.  Cur- 
tis, there  is  a  merciless  expansion  of  the  moral  task. 
The  immanent  God  drives  a  man  out  on  more  and 
more  perilous  ethical  adventures.  And  always  the 
man  comes  home  weary  and  footsore  and  with  a 
strange  sense  of  ethical  restlessness  in  his  heart. 
His  work  is  too  difficult  for  him.  He  has  attempted 
an  impossible  endeavour.  The  way  frowns  steep 
and  impassable  above  him.  And  his  heart  is  faint. 
His  will  is  depleted  of  power. 

This  experience  brings  to  a  man's  life  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  strangest  ethical  dilemma  of  which  this 
world  knows.  We  may  express  it  in  this  way.  If 
a  man  repudiates  his  moral  ideal  his  very  soul  of 
ethical  manhood  is  disintegrated.  If  he  accepts  his 
moral  ideal  he  finds  that  he  is  committed  to  a  work 
beyond  his  powers,  and  at  last  he  confronts  sharp 
and  bitter  and  cold  despair.  For  the  moment  it 
seems  as  if  either  way  ends  in  a  blind  alley.  For 
the  moment  it  seems  as  if  either  way  brings  hope- 
lessness at  last. 

Now,  to  be  sure,  a  great  many  people  never  follow 
this  process  to  its  stern  and  relentless  conclusion. 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        1 73 

Many  men  are  serious  and  earnest  in  a  series  of  spas- 
motie  endeavours.  They  never  learn  the  meaning  of 
paying  the  full  price  of  devotion  to  the  moral  de- 
mand. Many  men  sense  the  ugly  quality  of  the  ex- 
perience of  the  man  who  drinks  the  whole  cup  and 
with  a  shrewd  practical  sagacity  they  refuse  to  go  so 
far  as  that.  They  invent  for  themselves  a  sort  of 
conventional  ethical  code  which  demands  a  certain 
amount  of  loyalty  but  which  is  kept  easily  within  the 
reach  of  actual  human  achievement.  They  regard 
the  men  who  go  the  whole  length  of  the  fight  as  rather 
hectic  individuals.  And  at  last  they  come  to  feel 
that  these  heroes  of  the  moral  fight  are  raising  arti- 
ficial issues.  They  themselves  have  passed  out  of 
the  range  of  those  high  and  mastering  demands  that 
fairly  seem  to  tear  the  soul  apart,  and  they  do  not 
see  why  any  one  else  should  be  troubled  by  them. 
Then  there  are  those  who  become  so  engrossed  with 
some  practical  program  that  they  escape  from  the 
most  searching  inner  experiences.  They  do  much 
good  in  the  world  in  a  wholesome  human  way.  And 
their  practical  endeavours  take  the  place  of  that 
dizzy  mountain  climbing  where  men  have  the  most 
startling  and  significant  ethical  adventures.  Some- 
times they  are  tempted  to  be  rather  complacent  as 
they  think  of  the  way  in  which  they  have  substituted 
a  vigorous  and  healthful  activity  for  a  dangerous 
and  unwholesome  introspection. 

But  the  real  moral  heroes  refuse  to  stop  at  any 
pleasant  half-way  houses.  Even  when  they  are  most 
busy  about  practical  tasks  they  feel  the  lure  of  the 
heights  of  ethical  attainment.    The  passion  for  per- 


174  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

fection  calls  to  them.  The  gleam  of  the  ideal  glows 
and  burns  before  them.  And  like  Merlin  they  fol- 
low the  gleam.  Even  when  within  and  without  there 
is  most  strangeness  and  confusion  and  the  presence 
of  all  the  voices  of  gloom  and  of  despair,  like  Brown- 
ing's famous  character  they  press  on.  "Childe  Ro- 
land to  the  dark  tower  came  and  a  great  blast  he 
blew."  The  men  who  have  shaken  the  world  in  its 
times  of  supreme  ethical  and  spiritual  crisis  have 
been  characterized  by  this  sort  of  struggle  with  a 
mastering  ideal.  Paul  knew  all  its  pangs.  Augus- 
tine knew  the  torture  of  its  failures.  Luther  fought 
its  battles  in  the  Augustinian  monastery.  Wesley 
pursued  the  quest  in  wearisome  ways  and  through 
sad  and  difficult  days.  It  is  rather  the  fashion  for 
easy-going  teachers  in  an  age  which  shrinks  from  the 
pain  of  the  supremest  moral  passion  to  suggest  that 
these  experiences  do  not  set  the  standard  for  human 
life.  It  is  indeed  true  that  more  than  one  road  leads 
to  the  City  of  God.  And  we  are  not  attempting  to 
prescribe  a  path  which  every  man  must  take  in 
mathematical  fashion.  But  it  does  not  seem  too 
much  to  say  that  the  possibility  of  this  struggle  is 
structural  in  human  nature  and  that  the  leaders  who 
have  done  the  most  to  propel  humanity  toward  a 
better  future  have  passed  through  it.  It  is  simply 
true  of  all  of  us  that  our  moral  ideals  ask  of  us 
more  than  we  can  do.  And  if  we  are  daring  enough 
to  follow  them  the  whole  length  of  loyalty  we  come 
to  a  place  where  our  very  peace  seems  about  to  be 
slain  forever  by  the  high  ideals  which  we  have  put 
upon  the  throne  of  our  lives.    What  is  the  meaning 


THE   INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD         1 75 

of  this  strange  situation  which  is  potential  in  every 
human  life  and  which  the  immanent  God  forces  into 
acute  consciousness  in  those  who  go  the  complete 
length  of  passionate  moral  commitment? 

When  once  we  look  at  the  matter  with  discerning 
and  alert  candour  it  is  evident  that  this  whole  ex- 
perience must  be  a  matter  of  disciplinary  prepara- 
tion on  the  way  to  that  experience  which  retains  the 
ethical  passion  in  the  very  terms  of  an  appropriation 
of  spiritual  peace. 

St.  Augustine  really  put  the  heart  of  the  matter 
in  one  penetrating  sentence  when  he  said :  ' '  0  God, 
Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself  and  our  souls  are  rest- 
less until  they  find  rest  in  Thee."  The  most  won- 
derful thing  which  God  has  done  for  man  is  to  make 
him  incomplete  until  his  incompleteness  is  supple- 
mented by  the  divine  completeness.  There  is  no  high 
destiny  for  a  creature  which  is  easily  satisfied.  There 
is  no  great  and  far-reaching  future  for  a  form  of 
life  which  speedily  and  thoroughly  rounds  out  the 
circle  of  its  desire,  its  hopes  and  its  aspiration.  The 
very  tragic  dilemma  involved  in  the  fact  that  when  a 
man  tries  to  live  up  to  his  ideals  they  at  once  begin 
to  outrun  him  is  really  the  most  splendid  and  the 
most  hopeful  thing  about  mankind.  There  is  then  a 
call  in  human  life  which  human  resources  cannot 
satisfy.  There  is  an  outreach  in  the  human  spirit 
which  the  potencies  of  human  personality  cannot 
realize.  The  very  structure  of  man's  nature  is  a 
promise.  The  very  character  of  human  personality 
is  a  prophecy.  The  promise  is  that  somehow,  some- 
where the  human  shall  be  supplemented  by  that 


176  THE  PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

which  will  satisfy  its  need.  The  prophecy  is  that 
God  Himself  will  meet  in  some  deep  and  notable 
way  the  life  in  which  He  has  planted  such  an  infinite 
outreach,  such  a  call  for  that  which  this  human  ex- 
perience of  life  can  never  give.  The  fact  that  a 
man's  moral  life  demands  what  he  can  never  accom- 
plish means  that  in  some  fashion  it  must  be  met  by 
a  divine  help  which  will  lift  incapacity  into  some 
serene  quiet  of  spiritual  strength. 

Now  in  the  terms  of  any  one  of  the  ethnic  religions 
it  is  possible  for  a  man  in  the  midst  of  his  conflict 
with  the  infinite  demand  of  his  own  ethical  life  over 
against  the  very  limited  fashion  in  which  he  can 
satisfy  that  demand  to  come  to  some  dim  sense  that 
the  thing  which  is  significant  about  his  own  life  is 
not  his  achievement  so  much  as  his  attitude.  "All 
that  the  world's  course  thumb  and  finger  failed  to 
plumb."  "Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed  into  a 
narrow  act."  The  fact  that  he  pushes  out  in  loyalty 
toward  the  highest  even  if  the  highest  is  beyond  his 
reach  has  vast  significance  to  that  realm  of  reality 
which  his  deepest  consciousness  puts  at  the  heart  of 
the  universe.  It  is  not  that  he  would  use  these 
words  to  describe  the  experience.  But  he  has  an 
experience  which  we  can  use  these  words  not  inade- 
quately to  describe.  Not  the  failure  of  his  achieve- 
ment, but  the  desperate  sincerity  of  his  endeavour, 
will  count  and  count  mightily  somewhere  in  the  uni- 
verse. It  is  the  present  immanent  God  who  gives 
him  this  experience  and  as  he  responds  to  it  and 
trusts  it  and  builds  his  hope  upon  it,  in  some  gen- 
uine way  this  man  who  has  never  come  into  contact 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        1 77 

with  the  vitalities  of  Christianity  is  justified  by 
faith. 

In  other  words,  anywhere  in  the  world  any  man 
can  come  to  a  personal  choice  and  a  venture  on  the 
kind  of  a  universe  which  will  take  account  of  that 
choice.  And  these  experiences  have  an  ethical 
quality  which  is  related  in  the  most  fundamental 
and  actual  way  to  the  experience  of  the  evangelical 
Christian  in  conversion.  It  is  from  this  point  of 
view  that  we  are  able  to  come  to  some  sort  of  appre- 
hension of  the  ethical  process  by  means  of  which  a 
man  who  has  never  heard  of  Christ  solves  his  per- 
sonal problem.  John  Wesley  was  large-minded 
enough  to  see  that  there  must  be  some  fashion  in 
which  the  heathen  could  have  a  genuine  opportunity 
in  respect  of  salvation.  When  we  understand  that 
the  immanent  God  brings  the  moral  life  to  a  climax 
of  necessary  decision  in  every  human  being  who  is 
capable  of  rational  choice,  and  then  is  ready  to 
whisper  a  word  of  hope  into  that  life,  we  begin  to 
see  that  those  moral  and  spiritual  processes  which 
take  a  particular  form  in  historical  Christianity  are 
in  some  germinal  and  real  fashion  within  the  reach 
of  human  beings  everywhere. 

Now  we  must  lift  the  question  which  has  to  do 
with  the  relation  of  this  vast  and  world-wide  work  of 
the  immanent  God  to  the  sanctions  and  to  the  ex- 
periences which  come  to  full  expression  in  historic 
Christianity. 

The  first  thing  of  which  we  must  take  account  is 
this :  The  whole  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  his- 
tory and  the  quality  of  ethical  struggle  and  re- 


178  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

ligious  peace  reflected  therein  lift  into  clearness  of 
experience  and  fullness  of  expression  just  those  re- 
lationships which  we  have  described  as  belonging  to 
human  life  everywhere.  The  struggle  of  Paul  to 
satisfy  his  religious  ideal  and  his  final  leap  of  faith 
in  the  mastering  and  saving  Christ  represents  the 
classical  and  complete  expression  of  just  that  quality 
of  struggle  and  dissatisfaction  and  then  the  out- 
reach of  trust  and  the  faith  that  intention  will  be 
the  important  matter  in  testing  the  meaning  of  a 
man's  life  somewhere  in  the  universe,  which  we 
found  characteristic  of  the  structure  of  human  life. 
The  contrast  between  the  law  and  the  Gospel  throws 
this  race-wide  experience  into  clear  perspective. 
When  Peter  expresses  his  dissatisfaction  with  the 
law  and  his  satisfaction  with  the  Gospel  you  have  an 
expression  in  concrete  form  of  a  thing  which  has 
come  out  in  all  sorts  of  ways  in  human  life,  only 
here  again  it  has  received  classic  and  unique  ex- 
pression. When  under  the  terms  of  a  terribly  stern 
legalism  a  man  wonders  if  the  gift  of  his  first  born 
will  satisfy  God  and  a  prophet  of  insight  cries  out : 
"What  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee  but  to  do 
justice  and  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  humbly  with 
thy  God,"  you  have  an  immortal  expression  of  an- 
other aspect  of  the  world-wide  struggle  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking.  In  other  words,  the  world-wide 
process  of  moral  and  spiritual  experience  comes  to 
full  articulation  in  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New. 

It  is  most  important  to  see  clearly  into  another 
aspect  of  the  problem.  The  God  who  is  revealed  in 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  is  just  the  God 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        1 79 

capable  of  that  world-wide  work  of  infinite  and  im- 
manent sympathy  and  of  sternly  strong  ethical  and 
spiritual  meaning  which  we  have  been  describing. 
Only  a  God  who  is  righteousness  alive  and  love  alive 
would  ever  go  out  on  such  an  adventure  of  intimate 
inner  activity  in  the  lives  of  men.  And  only  the  Old 
Testament  experience  of  religion  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment experience  of  religion  give  us  any  knowledge 
of  such  a  God.  The  gods  of  the  ethnic  religions  are 
simply  incapable  of  performing  such  a  task.  It  is 
beyond  the  scope  of  their  character.  And  so  the 
wonderful,  inner  experience  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking  finds  no  connection  with  an  historical  re- 
ligion whose  quality  corresponds  to  its  own  meaning 
until  it  comes  to  Christianity.  Then  the  inner  ex- 
perience and  the  historic  religion  fit  together  as  a 
hand  fits  in  a  glove.  The  God  who  is  revealed  in 
Jesus  Christ  could  do  just  this  thing.  The  God  re- 
vealed in  Jesus  Christ  is  loving  enough  to  desire  to 
do  just  this  thing.  The  God  revealed  in  Jesus  Christ 
is  of  that  deep  and  unsearchable  righteousness  which 
would  put  just  such  a  structural  capacity  for  ethical 
struggle  into  men,  and  would  guide  them  along  a 
path  of  restless  moral  ambition  whose  light  glows 
summoningly  before  them  all  the  while.  In  other 
words,  the  constitution  of  men  and  women  every- 
where and  the  characteristic  and  defining  struggles 
of  their  lives  exactly  correspond  to  that  interpreta- 
tion of  life  which  we  find  in  the  literature  collected 
in  the  book  we  call  the  Bible. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  voices  which  speak 
in  the  Bible  now  and  again  flash  forth  conceptions 


l8o  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

which  have  implicit  in  them  the  necessity  for  just 
such  a  world-wide  and  immanent  work  of  God  as  we 
have  described.  If  He  is  the  light  of  every  man 
who  comes  into  the  world  that  illumination  must  be 
brought  within  the  reach  of  men  in  some  such  way 
as  that  which  we  have  outlined.  If  He  is  no  respecter 
of  persons  but  regards  the  men  of  every  land  and 
every  religion,  then  He  must  have  some  actual  con- 
tact with  men  in  the  crises  of  their  lives.  When 
Jonah  finds  unselfish  heathen  of  finer  type  of  life 
than  a  selfish  prophet,  one  is  not  far  from  the  thought 
that  God  must  have  some  real  contact  with  these 
men.  When  Jesus  sees  multitudes  in  the  day  of 
Judgment  wondering  at  their  happy  fate  because 
they  had  never  seen  Him  in  need  only  to  learn  that 
every  ministry  to  human  need  is  ministry  to  Him,  we 
have  a  light  flashed  out  on  far  and  dark  places  of 
human  life  and  activity  and  struggle,  and  we  see 
men  who  have  never  heard  of  Christ  relating  them- 
selves to  some  of  the  deepest  matters  of  practical 
religion.  It  is  not  far  from  this  thought  to  the 
thought  of  the  immanent  God  at  work  in  their  lives. 
To  Jesus  the  sheep  not  of  this  fold  were  His  sheep 
also.  To  Paul  the  moral  voice  was  a  testimony  for 
God  in  every  age  and  in  every  land.  The  view  of 
a  work  of  God  in  the  world  as  wide  and  as  varied  as 
the  lives  lived  on  the  planet  is  imperative  if  we  are 
to  give  actuality  and  authenticity  to  the  Biblical  con- 
ception of  the  love  of  God.  If  God  is  love  in  some 
genuine  fashion  these  things  must  be  true.  "  He  is 
not  far  apart  from  any  one  of  us,  for  in  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being." 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS   OF  GOD         l8l 

At  this  point  we  come  to  a  matter  of  whose  im- 
portance it  would  be  difficult  to  speak  too  vigorously. 
This  has  to  do  with  the  fashion  in  which  the  truths 
brought  to  explicit  expression  in  the  Christian  re- 
ligion when  apprehended  in  their  historic  form  en- 
able God  to  do  for  men  what  it  was  not  possible  to  do 
before.  The  very  wonder  of  His  sympathetic  under- 
standing immanent  work  in  the  lives  of  men  involves 
certain  definite  limitations.  Just  because  He  works 
from  within  a  man's  life  taking  the  form  of  his  own 
thoughts  and  experiences  and  activities  and  his  con- 
fused prejudices,  it  is  necessary  for  Him  to  accept 
the  limitations  imposed  by  all  these  things.  The 
man  is  led  to  follow  the  best  he  knows.  But  the 
ethical  poverty  of  his  environment,  the  whole  quality 
of  his  life  may  make  that  best  a  very  poor  best  in- 
deed. And  it  may  even  happen  in  all  the  hard  and 
terrible  confusion  of  the  world  that  this  best  is 
caught  up  in  a  tangle  of  evil  which  is  misunder- 
stood as  good.  When  the  Hindoo  mother  gathered 
up  all  her  energies  for  her  supreme  act  of  devotion 
in  offering  her  babe  to  the  river,  there  was  supreme 
consecration  and  devotion  but  what  pitiable  and 
tragic  moral  confusion.  So  there  must  emerge  in  our 
thought  as  we  study  these  things  a  consciousness  of 
the  demand  that  life  move  toward  a  place  where 
the  moral  and  spiritual  decisions  shall  be  lifted 
above  the  clutter  of  confused  racial  and  tribal  and 
individual  life  into  the  clarity  of  views  of  life  and 
God  and  destiny,  which  correspond  to  the  inherent 
nobility  of  the  process  itself. 

And  this  is  just  what  happens  in  Christianity. 


1 82  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

Here  the  struggle  is  fought  out  in  the  terms  of  a 
clean  and  clear  code  of  ethics.  All  the  dim  and 
varied  outreaches  after  moral  victory  are  sharpened 
into  the  decisive  and  fundamental  moral  demands  of 
the  ten  commandments.  The  moral  fight  is  waged 
about  issues  essentially  worthy.  And  when  the  life 
comes  to  that  torn  and  confused  sense  of  incapacity 
to  organize  its  own  forces  into  anything  like  comple- 
tion and  peace,  there  comes  into  view  the  winsome 
and  wise  and  masterful  and  stainless  and  loving 
figure  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  the  law  made  human. 
He  is  the  law  turned  into  a  friend.  He  is  the  law 
with  loving  eyes  and  tender  heart.  He  can  see  all 
the  intentions  as  well  as  all  the  achievements.  One 
of  the  difficulties  about  an  impersonal  law  is  that  it 
can  never  include  all  the  efforts  in  its  account.  But 
a  loving  friend  can  consider  all  the  efforts  as  well  as 
all  the  successes. 

When  a  man  whose  ethical  life  is  sensitively  awake 
comes  into  contact  with  Jesus  Christ  he  has  two  con- 
flicting experiences.  One  is  an  up-gushing  of  eager 
friendliness  in  his  heart.  He  wants  to  cry  out, 
"Lord,  I  will  follow  thee  whithersoever  thou  goest." 
The  other  is  a  sense  of  unworthiness  in  the  presence 
of  that  stainless  life:  "Depart  from  me,  0  Lord,  for 
I  am  a  sinful  man."  The  whole  experience  greatly 
deepens  all  his  sense  of  moral  values.  For  very  soon 
he  begins  to  see  all  matters  of  right  and  wrong 
through  the  eyes  of  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  a  deep- 
ening comfort  in  the  friendliness  of  Jesus.  It  is  as  if 
the  ten  commandments  had  suddenly  taken  a  human 
body  and  came  walking  toward  you  with  a  friendly 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        183 

smile  and  with  outstretched  hand.  And  all  the  while 
there  is  a  consciousness  of  a  tragic  moral  need  only 
in  part  articulate  but  very  deep  and  very  real. 
Then  comes  the  Cross.  It  is  not  merely  a  green  hill 
far  away.  It  is  an  experience  which  is  vivid  and 
real  and  consciously  present.  And  in  the  presence 
of  that  deed  of  suffering  love,  the  responsive  human 
life  is  itself  swept  by  storms  of  suffering  love.  You 
cannot  express  what  happens  in  precise  and  accurate 
formulas.  But  you  can  know  that  in  that  hour  in 
strange  and  amazed  devotion  you  come  to  the  place 
where  you  understand  your  own  relation  to  the  char- 
acter of  God.  And  that  apprehension  of  what  God 
is  like  speaks  to  the  whole  circle  of  your  nature  and 
all  its  meanings.  Like  a  cleansing  stream  it  carries 
away  the  clogging  consciousness  of  the  weight  of  a 
hundred  evils.  You  have  found  a  God  whose  tower- 
ing righteousness  reaches  infinitely  above  anything 
which  you  have  ever  imagined.  You  have  found  a 
God  whose  love  lifts  you  and  saves  you  from  your- 
self and  reorganizes  your  whole  life  about  a  new 
center  of  unselfish  love.  Your  personal  problem  is 
solved.  Your  moral  problem  is  solved.  You  have 
found  the  supplement  to  your  own  weakness  in  the 
divine  strength.  You  have  found  a  forgiveness  as 
tender  as  it  is  ethical,  as  stern  and  lofty  as  it  is  full 
of  love.  You  have  found  the  basis  in  experience  for 
a  new  life  glad  and  spontaneous  and  free,  joyously 
going  forth  to  do  the  will  of  God  in  the  world. 

All  this  experience  of  contact  with  the  truths  of 
historic  Christianity  is  of  course  mediated  by  the 
presence   of  the   same  immanent   God   who   works 


184  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

through  the  ethical  experiences  of  men  everywhere. 
Only  now  He  is  working  on  material  which  ex- 
presses His  own  deepest  intention,  instead  of  on 
material  which  limits  the  nature  of  the  work  and 
the  nature  of  the  outcome.  God  can  cleanse  men's 
motives  in  the  terms  of  any  religion.  He  can  lift 
their  activities  to  the  standard  which  He  desires  only 
in  the  terms  of  the  historic  revelation  of  Himself  in 
Jesus  Christ.  All  that  is  done  dimly  and  vaguely 
and  prophetically  in  the  terms  of  human  life  every- 
where is  done  fully  and  adequately  and  with  all  its 
wonderful  cluster  of  implications  in  the  terms  of  the 
functioning  of  the  historic  Christian  religion  in  the 
world. 

This  man  of  sensitive  and  responsive  soul  of  whose 
life  we  have  been  speaking  finds  new  energizing  as 
he  comes  to  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  It  lives  in  his 
life.  It  is  warm  and  triumphant  in  his  spirit.  It  is 
the  expression  on  the  field  of  history  of  the  very 
thing  which  is  deepest  in  his  own  experience  of  vic- 
tory through  Christ.  Jesus  becomes  to  him  the  liv- 
ing Christ.  And  Christianity  becomes  the  religion 
of  the  activity  of  the  living  Christ  in  the  world. 
Death  itself  becomes  incidental.  Life  is  real.  Life 
is  present.  Life  is  victorious.  Life  stretches  away 
beyond  the  grave  in  endless  vistas  of  expanding  op- 
portunity. It  is  a  life  which  begins  here.  It  is  a 
life  which  comes  to  have  the  deepest  and  richest  con- 
tent here.  It  is  life  of  such  a  quality  as  God  worked 
into  it  and  upon  it,  and  it  is  only  natural  for  it  to 
go  on  forever.  And  this  personal  experience  of 
immortality  is  mediated  by  the  immanent  God  who 


THE  INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        185 

has  spoken  in  the  life  and  death  and  resurrection 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

All  of  these  experiences  inevitably  seek  a  social  ex- 
pression. The  love  for  God  becomes  the  love  for  the 
men  whom  He  loves  and  for  whom  Christ  was  will- 
ing to  die.  The  upreach  after  God  expresses  itself 
also  in  the  outreach  after  men.  There  is  a  noble  and 
passionate  discontent  with  everything  in  human  life 
which  does  not  correspond  to  the  high  and  loving 
will  of  God.  And  so  the  new  life  begins  to  express 
itself  in  all  the  practical  activities  of  brotherhood 
and  service.  It  goes  forth  to  remake  the  world  after 
the  fashion  of  the  will  of  God  and  the  needs  of  men. 
The  immanent  God  is  the  greatest  ally  of  the  social 
reformer,  as  the  historic  Christ  is  the  greatest  in- 
spirer  of  a  belief  in  justice  and  brotherhood  in  the 
relations  of  men. 

Now  in  what  fashion  may  we  say  that  such  a  re- 
ligion so  functioning  deserves  to  be  called  an  abso- 
lute religion  f  The  answer  comes  naturally  and  speaks 
at  every  step  in  the  very  terms  of  human  experience. 
In  the  first  place,  Christianity  may  be  rightly  called 
the  absolute  religion  because  it  alone  brings  a  mes- 
sage so  profoundly  related  to  the  very  structure  of 
humanity  that  when  it  is  accepted  and  followed  the 
problem  of  human  life  is  solved.  In  the  second  place, 
Christianity  may  be  called  the  absolute  religion  be- 
cause it  is  the  one  religion  which  gives  us  a  God  who 
by  virtue  of  His  very  character  and  power  is  able  to 
relate  Himself,  and  does  relate  Himself  to  every 
human  life  in  all  the  world.  With  an  infinite  tender 
sympathy  He  has  met  every  human  being  who  has 


186  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

ever  lived  on  this  planet,  He  has  spoken  from  within 
His  own  life  in  the  terms  of  His  own  experience, 
and  He  has  firmly  and  inevitably  pressed  that  life 
toward  a  decision  for  or  against  the  best  of  which 
that  life  was  capable  of  conceiving.  He  is  not  merely 
the  God  of  the  men  and  women  who  consciously  wor- 
ship Christ.  He  is  the  God  of  all  the  men  and 
women  in  the  world,  whatever  the  religion  under  the 
terms  of  which  they  meet  their  moral  and  spiritual 
problem.  Thirdly,  Christianity  may  be  called  the 
absolute  religion  because  while  any  man  anywhere 
can  work  out  his  personal  probation  in  the  terms 
of  this  ethnic  activity  of  the  immanent  God  the  great 
and  fully  articulated  and  amply  expressed  relation- 
ships of  God  to  men  and  of  men  with  each  other  only 
become  possible  under  the  terms  of  the  spread  of 
historic  Christianity  in  the  world.  Its  conception  of 
God,  its  conception  of  man,  its  conception  of  human 
relationships,  its  revelation  of  a  God  whose  very 
quality  is  love  and  righteousness  in  action,  its  crea- 
tion in  man  of  an  experience  of  conscious  peace  and 
power  as  the  human  is  supplemented  by  the  divine, 
as  the  God  who  wrought  the  great  deed  on  Calvary 
becomes  a  living  experience  in  man's  heart,  its  going 
forth  to  make  a  new  civilization — all  these  things 
spell  out  the  practical  and  functioning  supremacy  of 
Christianity  in  the  world. 

In  what  sense  have  we  the  right  to  say  that  such 
beliefs  about  the  infinite  nearness  of  God  to  all  men 
and  of  His  work  among  them  have  a  particular 
quality  of  productiveness?  In  the  first  place  it  is 
evident  that  such  a  thought  of  God  makes  religion 


THE   INFINITE  NEARNESS  OF  GOD        187 

clearly  a  part  of  every  life  and  finds  for  every  man 
an  actual  point  of  contact  with  God.  And  this  it 
does  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  just  to  the  fundamental 
ethical  sanctions.  It  gives  a  real  ethical  struggle,  a 
real  ethical  opportunity  and  a  real  personal  quality 
to  the  life  of  all  men.  It  gives  them  all  an  oppor- 
tunity to  accept.  And  it  gives  them  all  an  oppor- 
tunity to  reject.  And  this  it  does  not  in  the  terms 
of  some  artificially  applied  standard  brought  in  from 
without.  It  brings  on  the  battle  with  every  man  in 
the  very  terms  of  the  best  which  that  man  knows. 
The  fairness  of  such  a  view  must  go  far  to  commend 
it  and  to  commend  the  religion  of  which  it  is  a  part. 
The  experiences  of  millions  of  soldiers  on  the  battle- 
fields of  Europe  in  the  last  four  years  have  made  it 
evident  enough  in  the  terms  of  contemporary  experi- 
ence that  God  is  doing  tremendous  work  among  men 
apart  from  the  actual  and  conscious  connections  of 
ecclesiastical  life  and  apart  from  conscious  thought 
about  the  historic  Christ.  The  interpretation  which 
we  have  given  does  justice  to  all  these  experiences. 
It  also  opens  the  way  for  insight  into  the  fact  that 
all  the  other  work  of  the  immanent  God  comes  to  full 
flower  and  complete  expression  when  the  life  is  con- 
sciously connected  with  the  potent  and  regenerating 
work  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  world.  It  speaks  in  the 
terms  of  human  experience.  It  speaks  in  the  terms 
of  the  deepest  and  most  poignant  experience  of  the 
times  in  which  we  are  living.  And  it  does  justice  to 
the  manifold  and  varied  experiences  of  men  in  the 
realm  of  morals  and  religion,  while  it  comes  to  a 
climax   of   significance   in   its   appreciation   of   the 


1 88  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

towering  personality  and  the  transforming  work  of 
Jesus  Christ.  Only  the  God  whom  we  see  in  the 
face  of  Christ  can  be  the  infinitely  near  friend  and 
patient  companion  of  every  human  spirit.  That 
restless  feeling  so  charged  with  inner  disquiet  that 
splendid  as  is  Christianity  it  does  not  touch  all  men 
and  it  does  not  touch  all  noble  human  experiences, 
vanishes  before  the  thought  of  the  infinitely  near 
God  who  is  part  of  the  constant  experience  of  men 
everywhere.  Such  a  belief  about  God  releases  all 
our  confident  joyous  hope,  calls  forth  our  glad  al- 
legiance, and  sends  us  forth  to  be  the  best  and  to  do 
the  most  in  the  world. 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  SOCIAL  LIFE 
OF  GOD 


LECTURE  VI 
THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD 

EVERY  age  has  its  own  approach  to  theology. 
In  the  eleventh  century  men  were  thinking 
in  the  terms  of  Feudalism.  And  so  it  came 
to  pass  that  when  Anselm  wrote  "Cur  Deus  Homo" 
he  based  his  interpretation  upon  Feudal  conceptions. 
In  our  own  time  the  pervasive  mastering  experience  h 
is  the  social  passion.  The  world  is  dreaming  of 
brotherhood  as  it  never  dreamed  of  brotherhood  be- 
fore. It  has  a  new  and  powerful  determination  to 
make  brotherhood  actual  in  the  lives  of  men.  It 
has  an  impatience  with  social  injustice,  and  a  de- 
termination to  right  the  wrongs  which  blight  human 
life,  which  give  it  a  distinctive  character.  It  deeply 
intends  to  make  the  very  structure  of  civilization  the 
support  of  brotherhood  and  not  in  any  sense  its  foe. 
Man's  inhumanity  to  man  is  to  cease,  and  society  is 
to  become  a  noble  mother  to  us  all.  It  is  to  cease  to 
be  a  mighty  power  of  exploitation. 

No  one  can  have  the  slightest  contact  with  the 
essential  movements  of  thought  and  action  in  our 
time  without  coming  into  contact  with  this  urgent,  | 
masterful  passion  for  social  betterment.  It  gleams 
in  men's  eyes.  It  gives  a  vibrant  intensity  to  their 
voices.     It  beats  in  their  hearts.     It  moves  along 

191 


192  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

their  fingers,  inspiring  them  to  unselfish  deeds. 
John  Ruskin  used  to  say  that  the  cruelest  man  living 
would  put  on  sackcloth  and  ashes  if  he  really  saw 
the  world  as  it  is.  Multitudes  of  men  and  women  in 
our  time  have  dared  to  look  out  upon  life  and  to  see 
the  world  as  it  is.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  have 
not  put  on  sackcloth  and  ashes.  They  have  made  a 
solemn  vow.  They  have  entered  upon  a  great  cru- 
sade. They  have  gone  forth  to  strive  and  struggle 
and  work  and  plan  and  achieve,  all  the  while  bring- 
ing the  world  a  little  nearer  to  their  desire  of  brother- 
hood. They  have  invaded  all  the  places  where 
women  and  children  have  laboured.  They  have 
turned  on  the  light  in  order  that  all  the  world  may 
see.  They  have  gone  wherever  homes  and  factories 
are  unsanitary.  They  have  collected  all  the  ugly 
and  hurtful  facts.  Then  they  have  hurled  those 
facts  into  the  consciousness  of  the  general  public. 
The  general  public  has  not  always  wanted  to  be  in- 
formed. But  there  has  been  no  opportunity  for 
choice.  The  facts  were  not  to  be  evaded.  They 
were  not  to  be  avoided.  The  men  and  women  with 
the  passion  for  a  fair  and  genuine  opportunity  for 
men  and  women  everywhere  have  studied  the  prob- 
lems of  wages  and  hours  of  work  and  their  relation 
to  wholesome  and  healthful  living  and  human  ef- 
ficiency. The  results  of  these  studies  have  been 
spread  broadcast.  We  have  not  been  allowed  to  sit 
in  our  homes  in  comfort.  The  wan  pathetic  figure 
of  the  child  in  the  mine,  the  bent  and  broken  form  of 
the  woman  engaged  in  labour  for  which  she  was  en- 
tirely unfitted,  the  disheartened  face  of  the  man  re- 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  193 

ceiving  after  the  hardest  toil  a  wage  inadequate  for 
his  needs  and  the  needs  of  his  family — all  these  have 
been  kept  before  our  minds.  We  have  not  been 
allowed  to  forget.  And  more  and  more  deeply 
has  grown  the  conviction  that  these  things  must 
cease. 

This  spirit  has  expressed  itself  in  no  end  of  ef- . 
fective  reforms  in  many  of  the  nations  of  the  world.  * 
It  has  led  to  old-age  pensions.  It  has  led  to  pensions 
for  those  workers  who  are  ill.  It  has  been  the  force 
behind  laws  as  to  child  labour  and  the  work  of 
women  in  industries  demanding  physical  powers  and 
endurance  of  an  unusual  character.  It  has  ex- 
pressed itself  in  legislation  regarding  the  buildings 
where  men  must  live  and  the  buildings  where  men 
must  work.  It  has  dealt  with  matters  of  sanitation 
in  the  profoundest  and  most  far-reaching  way. 
Everywhere  we  see  the  results  of  this  vigilant  and 
powerful  spirit  working  to  make  the  world  a  better 
place  for  all  the  men  and  women  and  little  children 
who  live  in  it. 

One  of  the  most  disconcerting  and  unhappy  as- 
pects of  the  struggle  which  came  to  many  men  and 
women  during  the  war  was  connected  with  the  slow- 
ness with  which  many  men  and  women  of  the  noblest 
passion  saw  that  the  conflict  had  to  do  with  some- 
thing for  which  they  really  cared.  They  had  been 
accustomed  to  think  of  wars  as  the  method  by  which 
the  exploiting  classes  furthered  their  cruel  work. 
Many  of  the  men  and  women  of  social  passion  had 
become  enthusiastic  advocates  of  the  pacifist  position. 
And  so  when  the  war  came  it  left  them  cold.     The 


194  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

keenest  and  wisest  of  them  did  not  make  this  mis-  -i 
take.     They  saw  that  everything  which  the  social  * 
passion  holds  dear  was  at  stake  in  the  war.     They 
saw  that  the  cause  of  the  Allies  represented  the 
hope  of  industrial  democracy  as  well  as  the  hope 
of  political  democracy  in  the  world.     They  had  not 
become  so  preoccupied  with  one  noble  passion  that 
they  had  no  eyes  for  its  larger  relationships  and 
for  all  the  other  structural  elements  of  civilization 
which  must  be  conserved  if  the  hope  of  brotherhood 
is  to  make  any  real  headway  in  the  world.     Then  the 
war  itself  brought  to  the  place  of  conscious  meaning 
a  vast  amount  of  social  hope  and  consecration  which  \ 
was  not  in  any  definite  wa}^  connected  with  the  move-  ' 
ment  for  social  reconstruction  which  had  been  mak- 
ing its  way  in  the  world. 

Millions  of  men  and  women  who  had  not  thought 
much  about  these  things  awoke  with  a  shock  after 
the  rape  of  Belgium.  And  as  the  issue  became 
clearer  and  clearer  they  saw  the  darkness  which 
threatened  to  engulf  the  world  and  for  the  sake  of  the 
oppressed  in  every  land,  for  the  sake  of  the  children 
yet  unborn,  they  became  ready  to  make  the  uttermost 
sacrifice.  Many  a  soldier  who  would  not  have  been 
suspected  of  cherishing  particularly  altruistic 
thoughts,  kept  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart  as  his 
deepest  inspiration  the  belief  that  he  was  giving  him- 
self for  the  making  of  a  better  world.  The  rarer 
and  more  responsive  spirits  as  they  came  to  see  the 
meaning  of  the  international  struggle  gave  them- 
selves to  it  with  an  abandon  of  consecration,  with  a 
high  and  self-forgetful  passion,  which  will  be  im- 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  195 

mortal  in  the  memory  of  the  world.  The  whole  world 
began  to  dream  of  brotherhood.  The  whole  world 
began  to  dream  of  the  new  day.  The  whole  world 
began  to  feel  that  the  war  was  to  have  a  great  out- 
come, that  better  times  lay  ahead.  In  various  forms,  ^ 
in  various  types  of  expression  the  social  passion  be-  j 
gan  to  sweep  over  the  world. 

Of  course  it  took  some  strange  and  terrible  forms. 
Of  course  the  evil-minded  and  the  vicious  attempted 
to  exploit  it.  Of  course  some  people,  as  the  wine  of 
new-found  liberty  went  to  their  head,  found  them- 
selves unable  to  distinguish  between  evil  and  good. 
Of  course  the  sudden  flashing  of  blinding  light  in 
some  lands  which  had  been  dark  as  midnight  has  had 
cruel  and  tragic  effect.  Russia  has  been  finding  an 
undisciplined  and  unmastered  freedom  itself  a  kind 
of  terrible  nightmare,  itself  a  kind  of  tyranny.  But 
wisely  and  unwisely  interpreted,  nobly  and  ignobly 
expressed,  the  new  spirit  moved  over  the  world.  It 
is  moving  so  to-day.  It  is  a  spirit  of  power.  It  is 
a  spirit  of  overwhelming  passion  and  potency.  It 
must  be  interpreted.  It  must  be  chastened  and 
guided.  But  it  must  also  be  heeded.  By  it  the 
Peace  Conference  will  be  judged.  By  it  we  will  all 
be  judged.  In  spite  of  all  the  confusion  and  the  tur- 
moil and  the  misapprehension,  God's  voice  is  in  the  L 
social  passion  and  that  voice  must  be  heard.  The 
forces  which  have  been  released  are  not  to  be  chained 
again  by  tyrants.  The  forces  which  have  been  re- 
leased are  not  to  be  exploited  by  selfish  and  imprac- 
tical and  unethical  demagogues.  The  forces  which 
have  been  released  are  to  enter  into  life  deeply  and 


196  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

powerfully.  And  they  are  to  be  so  interpreted  and 
guided  that  they  will  be  able  to  renew  the  life  of  the 
world. 

We  all  feel  this  new  air  blowing  upon  our  faces. 
Some  of  us  love  it.  Some  of  us  hate  it.  Some  of  us 
rejoice  in  it.  Some  of  us  are  afraid  of  it.  And  we 
all  need  to  feel  that  there  is  always  possible  tragedy 
in  the  release  of  such  great  human  forces.  They 
may  be  terrifically  and  destructively  used.  But 
there  is  always  glory  in  the  release  of  great  human 
forces.  They  may  be  nobly,  and  wisely,  and  pro- 
ductively used  for  the  good  of  all  mankind.  In  any 
event  for  good  or  for  evil — for  great  good  we  be- 
lieve— the  social  passion  is  far  and  away  the  most' 
potent  and  dynamic  thing  in  the  life  of  the  world 
to-day. 

Now  there  is  a  profound  question  which  the  philos- 
opher can  ask  regarding  the  social  passion.  There  is 
a  deeply  probing  and  far-reaching  inquiry  which  the 
theologian  can  pursue  regarding  the  whole  passionate 
and  noble  dream  of  ideal  human  relationships. 
What  is  the  basis  of  this  restless  longing  for  brother- 
hood? What  is  the  source  of  this  outreaching  and 
expanding  ideal  of  happier  human  relationships? 
Is  the  whole  wonderful  enthusiasm  a  passing  wave  of 
emotion?  Or  does  it  have  some  deep  and  structural 
relation  to  the  very  nature  of  things?  If  we  get 
back  to  the  last  and  ultimate  reality  in  the  universe 
will  we  find  a  basis  and  a  justification  for  the  social 
passion  there  ? 

At  first  this  may  seem  to  be  rather  an  idle  and 
academic  question.    It  may  seem  that  it  has  to  do 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  197 

with  processes  of  remote  and  ethereal  speculation 
which  have  little  relation  to  the  actual  and  practical 
life  of  men  under  the  heavy  and  burdening  pres- 
sures of  the  modern  world.  The  study  of  all  the 
manifold  relationships  of  the  industrial  revolution 
which  began  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury may  seem  to  be  a  matter  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance to  the  man  who  is  interested  in  the  prac- 
tical functioning  of  brotherhood  in  the  world.  The 
study  of  the  nature  of  God  in  order  to  see  if  we  can 
find  an  actual  basis  for  all  the  social  ideal  as  it  works 
out  among  men  may  seem  entirely  beside  the  mark. 
A  little  close  and  critical  thinking,  however,  makes  it 
very  clear  that  the  very  greatest  danger  to  which  the 
social  passion  is  subjected  is  just  the  danger  which 
comes  from  the  suggestion  that  it  is  all  very  beautiful 
and  very  noble  and  very  fine,  but  that  it  is  an  en- 
tirely impractical  and  visionary  thing.  We  may  be 
told  that  it  is  quite  natural  for  young  men  who  have 
never  had  much  experience  of  the  actual  vicissitudes 
of  life  to  give  themselves  with  an  abandon  of  enthusi- 
asm to  the  fight  for  an  achieved  brotherhood  in  the 
world.  But  we  may  be  reminded  sagely  that  they 
will  grow  older  and  that  the  disillusioning  experi- 
ences of  the  advancing  years  will  give  them  a  prac- 
tical poise  based  upon  the  apprehension  that  shimmer- 
ing sunlit  dreams  must  be  tested  by  the  hard  stern 
facts  of  a  very  real  if  a  very  unlovely  world.  Now 
as  long  as  our  enthusiasms  last  we  may  smile  with 
superior  and  lofty  optimism  at  such  critical  sugges- 
tions. But  the  difficulty  is  that  these  suggestions 
come  not  only  from  consciously  hostile  opponents  of 


198  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

our  position.  In  a  sense  they  come  up  from  life 
itself.  Even  if  nobody  takes  the  time  to  call  us 
visionaries  a  long  succession  of  painful  and  humiliat- 
ing experiences  is  likely  to  put  just  that  word  into 
our  own  minds. 

If  you  could  keep  the  sharpness  of  your  original 
classifications  life  would  be  a  good  deal  simplified. 
Perhaps  you  begin  with  a  very  definite  view.  On 
the  one  side  you  have  an  exploiting  capital.  On  the 
other  you  have  an  oppressed  and  downtrodden 
labour.  You  idealize  one  group.  You  absolutely 
condemn  the  other  group.  In  your  zestful  and 
passionate  enthusiasm  you  reach  the  place  where  any 
argument  which  includes  the  facing  of  facts  un- 
favourable to  any  labour  groups  seems  to  you  in- 
spired and  dangerous,  a  part  of  a  subtle  and  skillful 
propaganda  for  the  further  enslavement  of  the 
workers.  On  the  other  hand  any  argument  which 
sees  that  there  are  some  aspects  of  the  problem  in 
relation  to  which  capital  has  something  of  value  to 
say,  indicates  a  willingness  to  bend  and  scrape  be- 
fore the  exploiting  group.  With  some  such  attitude 
as  this  a  clean  cut  fine  young  man  goes  into  the  con- 
flict. There  seems  to  be  a  good  deal  to  justify  his 
original  position.  He  does  find  hard  and  evil  and 
heartless  exploitation.  He  does  find  heroic  and  noble 
aspiration  for  a  better  and  more  unfettered  world  on 
the  part  of  the  labouring  group.  But  as  time  goes 
on  other  and  disconcerting  facts  begin  to  knock  at 
the  door  of  his  mind.  His  original  conception  of  the 
unadulterated  idealism  of  the  labouring  group  finds 
itself  confronted  by  many  practical  difficulties.     The 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  199 

exploitation  of  labouring  groups  by  labour  leaders, 
and  all  the  fashion  in  which  one  group  is  willing  to 
accept  gains  at  the  expense  of  another  tend  to  confuse 
the  issue.  It  is  not  by  any  means  that  this  sort  of 
thing  is  universal,  but  there  is  so  much  of  it  that 
the  case  loses  its  sharp  distinctness. 

Then,  gradually,  it  becomes  necessary  to  admit 
that  there  is  a  problem  raised  by  a  very  human 
tendency  to  get  the  largest  possible  remuneration 
for  the  very  least  possible  expenditure  of  labour  and 
energy.    The  Avidespread  conception  of  a  necessary 
class  war  leads  workers  to  regard  the  employing 
group  as  foes  to  be  outwitted  by  any  possible  method 
rather  than  as  allies  to  whom  careful  and  faithful  co- 
operation is  to  be  given.    A  long  and  careful  ob-l 
servation  is  likely  to  convince  a  man  that  the  law  of  1 
selfishness  is  operative  with  a  tremendous  efficiency  \ 
in  each  group.     At  least  it  becomes  clear  that  an  ex- 
change of  groups  in  the  place  of  leadership,  so  that 
the  workers  rather  than  the  trained  organizers  would 
be  in  power  would  simply  mean  a  change  of  masters ) 
and  would  not  mean  the  coming  of  an  ideal  age.     The 
study  of  the  situation  in  Russia  illustrates  the  diffi- 
culty with  which  we  retain  our  assured  optimism  as 
we  watch  the  functioning  of  a  revolutionary  workers' 
group  in  actual  process  of  exercising  its  power. 

It  may  be  possible  for  some  academic  enthusiasts  \ 
separated  from  Russia  by  thousands  of  miles  to  keep 
their  hearty  hopefulness.  It  seems  pretty  difficult 
for  those  on  the  ground  who  feel  the  tragedy  of  the 
anarchy  not  to  lose  courage.  It  may  be  claimed  that 
the  lack  of  education  on  the  part  of  the  masses  in 


200  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

Kussia  is  accountable  for  the  atrocities.  In  that 
case  we  may  be  reminded  that  the  sickening  deeds  of 
Germany  in  the  world  war  were  not  the  result  of  a 
tremendous  national  ignorance.  It  is  just  this 
emerging  of  calculating  and  remorseless  evil  in  every 
group,  whatever  its  education  or  lack  of  education, 
whatever  its  wealth  or  lack  of  wealth,  which  makes  it 
so  hard  for  us  to  keep  a  firm  hold  upon  our  prac 
tical  social  idealism.  It  looks  as  if  the  facts  are 
against  us.  The  study  of  a  Peace  Congress  like 
the  Congress  of  Vienna  at  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  or  the  examination  of  some  aspects  of  the 
negotiations  at  the  Conference  at  the  close  of  the 
world  war  of  our  own  time  simply  emphasize  the 
difficulty  which  will  come  to  candid  and  practical 
minds  in  respect  of  this  matter  of  keeping  a  really 
hopeful  social  passion  in  the  midst  of  the  disillusion- 
ing facts  of  life. 

As  the  years  go  by  the  problem  is  likely  to  become 
acute  to  the  social  worker.  It  is  not  pleasant  to 
think  of  the  ardent  and  eager  spirits  who  have  found 
the  pressure  too  great  and  have  come  to  feel  that 
the  task  is  hopeless.  The  settlement  with  all  its 
friendly  lights  has  tragedies  enough  of  its  own. 
When  the  sturdy  boy  to  whom  you  have  given  such 
long  and  eager  attention  remorselessly  deceives  you 
and  goes  his  own  evil  way,  when  the  girl  to  whom 
you  have  given  such  hours  of  that  self-forgetful 
friendliness  which  is  your  best  offering  becomes  an 
evil  influence  right  at  the  center  of  your  little  circle, 
you  try  to  blame  it  all  upon  some  hereditary  taint,  or 
some  element  in  the  environment  which  you  have 


\ 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  201 

\been  unable  to  master.  But  there  are  times  when 
you  suspect  that  these  potent  watchwords  do  not 
reach  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  You  have  a  glimpse 
into  homes  where  the  same  tragedies  follow  the  most 
careful  training  in  families  of  a  noble  tradition,  and 
a  disheartening  feeling  that  selfishness  is  more  funda- 
mental and  more  potent  in  human  nature  than  any 
noble  dream  of  brotherhood  begins  to  work  its  way 
into  your  life.  You  begin  to  suspect  that  disin- 
tegrating selfishness  can  maintain  itself  in  the  best 
possible  environment.  You  begin  to  wonder  if  the 
hope  of  brotherhood  has  any  such  structural  place 
in  life  as  you  had  believed.  You  know  rich  sinners 
against  the  social  law  of  brotherhood.  You  know 
poor  sinners  against  the  social  law  of  brotherhood. 
You  know  learned  men  who  have  violated  its  sanc- 
tions. You  know  ignorant  men  who  scorn  its  behests. 
And  as  the  years  go  on  and  you  see  the  gay  mockery 
with  which  many  people  of  all  classes  regard  your 
faithfulness  to  your  vision  of  a  world  where  each 
lives  for  the  good  of  all  the  rest,  you  begin  to  feel  a 
more  andjrnore  potent  pressurejDack  of  the  question 
as^to  what  place  all  this  shining  idealism  actually 
has  or  can  make  for  itself  in  the  constitution  of 
things.  It  is  not  merely  that  you  are  old  and  weary 
and  ill,  it  is  that  year  after  year  life  itself  has  been 
fighting  your  hopes  and  your  dreams.  The  erosion 
of  the  continuous  days  seems  to  prove  that  the  struc- 
ture of  things  is  against  you. 

The  problem  emerges  in  its  actual  quality  by  this 
time.  Glowing  social  idealism  is  a  tremendously  fine 
thing.     But  if  it  has  a  superficial  foundation  it  is 


202  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

likely  to  vanish  away.  Unless  it  is  founded  deeply 
upon  facts  and  principles  which  can  stand  victori- 
ously against  all  the  disillusioning  facts  of  the  world 
it  is  likely  to  turn  to  a  cynical  misanthropy  all  the 
more  morose  and  bitter  because  it  comes  in  reaction 
from  an  idealism  which  had  no  sure  and  dependable 
and  permanent  basis.  Many  men  of  glowing  radical 
enthusiasms  became  men  of  a  somewhat  scornful 
conservatism  after  the  horrors  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. Russia  is  to-day  a  menace  to  the  social  ideal- 
isms of  the  world.  Whenever  the  prophets  of  a 
social  reconstruction  fail  to  base  their  labours  deeply 
enough  and  soundly  enough  they  are  likely  to  be  pre- 
paring for  an  hour  of  reaction  in  whose  terrors  all 
their  dreams  will  be  swept  away.  The  powers  of 
reaction  would  have  been  overthrown  long  ago  if 
men  of  dauntless  hopes  had  not  promised  unwisely, 
and  released  forces  of  whose  meaning  they  had  no 
real  knowledge,  and  attempted  to  build  their  fabric 
in  naive  ignorance  of  some  of  the  most  fundamental 
facts  of  human  nature,  and  failed  to  base  their  whole 
philosophy  of  life  upon  a  firm  and  permanent  sup- 
port. To  rescue  our  social  idealisms  in  an  hour  of 
world-wide  reaction,  to  keep  their  bright  light  shin- 
ing in  an  hour  of  far-flung  disillusionment  is  one  of 
the  supreme  tasks  of  our  time. 

The  whole  situation  is  infinitely  complex  and  there 
are  many  things  which  are  necessary  in  order  to  deal 
adequately  with  all  of  its  aspects.  There  are  a  good 
many  practical  matters  of  method  which  go  beyond 
the  reach  of  this  series  of  lectures.  But  one  matter 
of  fundamental  significance  is  right  before  us  in  thr 


THE   SOCIAL   LIFE   OF   GOD  203 

middle  of  the  road.  It  is  clear  that  if  we  can  come 
to  a  conviction  that  the  social  passion  is  structural  1 
in  the  fundamental  reality  of  the  universe,  if  we  can  I 
be  assured  that  it  is  a  reflection  of  something  which  * 
belongs  to  the  eternal  life  of  God,  then  everything 
will  be  changed  and  there  will  be  new  light  falling  all 
about  us.  It  is  possible  to  trace  the  social  dream  J 
back  to  the  will  of  God.  But  if  we  do  that  we  will 
always  lack  a  needed  inspiration.  If  the  dream  of 
unselfish  brotherhood  is  something  God  willed  for 
man  without  ever  possessing  it  Himself  then  it  can 
never  have  the  mightiest  sanction  or  the  most  power- 
ful pressure  in  our  own  lives.  If  we  can  get  it  back 
of  the  will  of  God  into  the  very  nature  of  God  then  it 
will  be  secure  for  us  forever.  This  may  seem  like  a 
modern  introduction  of  the  old  battle  between  the 
Thomists  and  the  Scotists  in  the  theology  of  the 
latter  part  of  the  Middle  Ages.  If  that  is  true  we 
will  merely  remark  that  a  discussion  which  becomes 
densely  verbal  may  after  all  have  its  rise  in  some- 
thing very  real  and  deeply  significant.  From  the 
standpoint  already  indicated  in  our  discussion  of  the 
Adventurous  God  it  is  very  clear  that  what  God 
meets  in  personal  experience  has  a  more  fundamental 
grip  than  what  God  requires  apart  from  His  own 
experience — if  there  is  anything  which  He  requires 
in  that  way.  And  so  we  see  that  if  the  social  passion 
is  an  eternal  reality  in  God's  own  life  it  at  once  re- 
ceives an  absolutely  new  place  in  all  our  thought  of 
human  relationships.  If  there  is  a  perfect  social  life 
in  God  then  there  is  a  fundamental  and  eternally 
victorious  validity  in  the  social  dream.     It  is  not  an 


204  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

idle  vision.  It  is  not  a  baseless  hope.  It  is  the 
summons  to  men  that  they  make  their  life  in  time  a 
reflection  of  that  which  is  God 's  life  in  eternity. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  all  this  is  said  in  so  many 
words  in  one  of  the  most  striking  passages  of  the 
New  Testament.  In  the  memorable  intercessory 
prayer  of  Jesus  which  is  recorded  in  the  seventeenth 
chapter  of  John's  Gospel,  the  Master  is  praying  for 
the  disciples  whom  He  is  so  soon  to  leave.  He  re- 
quests with  the  most  profound  and  deep  solicitude 
("That  they  may  be  one,  even  as  we."  And  a  little 
(later  in  the  same  great  prayer,  He  is  speaking  of 
all  that  vast  company  of  those  who  shall  become 
His  followers  in  the  future,  and  He  prays  "  that  they 
may  all  be  one ;  even  as  thou  Father,  art  in  me,  and 
I  in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be  in  us. "  In  a  moment 
He  recurs  again  to  the  same  mastering  and  dominat- 
ing idea,  "that  they  may  be  one,  even  as  we  are 
one;  I  in  them,  and  thou  in  me,  that  they  may  be 
perfected  into  one. ' '  Now  if  we  are  to  give  any  sort 
of  actuality  to  these  words  they  must  mean  that  the 
perfect  life  of  the  Father  and  the  Son  in  the  har- 
mony of  joyously  self- forgetful  love  is  to  be  the  type  j 
for  the  life  of  that  brotherhood  of  loving  men  which  I 
Jesus  founded.  He  sees  in  the  eternal  life  of  God' 
a  pattern  for  the  life  of  men  in  time.  The  Godhead 
is  an  eternity  of  mutual  life  in  love,  and  the  Church 
is  to  become  a  reflection  of  that  kind  of  loving 
brotherhood. 

From  this  standpoint  let  us  look  at  the  historic 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  We  are  not  interested  now 
in  any  process  of  scholastic  dialectic,  for  or  against  it.  | 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  205 

We  are  not  interested  in  any  subtle  metaphysical 
aspect  of  the  problem.  We  do  want  to  know  just 
this  thing :  Is  there  any  practically  functioning 
power  in  the  view  of  God  as  triune  when  we  apply 
that  interpretation  to  the  urgent  necessities  of  our 
whole  situation  as  respects  the  social  passion  ?  What 
would  it  mean  for  the  social  life  of  man  if  we  be- 
lieved in  the  social  life  in  God? 

Interpreted  from  this  standpoint  the  historic  view 
of  the  Trinity  would  mean  that  the  life  of  God  has 
included  always  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the 
Holy  Spirit,  tln^ee^axilu^persQiis  bound  together  in 
the  oneness  of  a  perfect  life,  each  perfectly  loving  the 
others,  eacn^givm^Himself  in  eternal  unselfish  joy 
to  the  others,  the  very  life  of  God  being  an  eternal 
glory  of  sacrificial  love.  In  a  moment  we  shall  be 
ready  to  speak  of  some  of  the  problems  connected 
with  such  a  conception.  Now,  as  we  have  said,  we 
merely  wish  to  lift  the  inquiry  as  to  what  would  be 
the  productive  power  of  such  a  belief  if  we  could 
hold  it?  The  answer  comes  with  a  power  and  a 
momentum  which  fairly  startles  us.  If  the  life  of 
God  is  an  eternal  realization  of  all  that  we  mean  by 
a  perfect  social  organism  then  the  whole  conception 
of  society  is  lifted  into  new  meaning  and  comes  to 
participate  in  higher  relationships.  If  the  eternal 
experience  of  God  is  built  about  the  actuality  of  un- 
selfish love,  if  God  Himself  perpetually  loses  His  life 
that  He  may  find  it,  then  it  is  true  that  unselfishness 
is  not  a  soft  and  vague  and  impossible  dream.  It  is 
more  real  than  selfishness.  It  is  more  actual  than  all 
the  hard  self-assertiveness  of  which  we  know  so 


206  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

much.     It  is  as  real  as  the  very  structure  of  the 
universe.     It  is  as  real  as  the  nature  of  God. 

Love  is  not  a  merely  biological  product  resulting 
from~a  curious  process  of  abstracting  some  elements 
from  what  was  originally  a  purely  physical  experi- 
ence.    Love  is_an  echo  in  time  of  the  most  powerful 
voice  in  eternity.     Love  is  an  experience  which  as- 
sures us  that  we  have  indeed  upon  us  the  half  effaced 
signature  of  God.    Love  is  as  strong  as  that  life  of 
God  where  it  reigns  eternally  supreme.    Hate  is  al- 
ways on  the  way  to  destruction.     Love  is  always  on 
the  way  to  the   throne.     Indeed,   in   the  invisible 
splendours  of  the  life  of  God,  love  is  always  on  the 
throne.     When  Love  fails  in  time  we  can  always  go- 
back  to  its  victory  in  eternity,  and  therefore  we  can 
always  be  sure  of  its  victory  at  a  later  time.     Dis- 
illusioning facts  break  upon  us  in  vain.     They  all 
have  to  do  with  the  transient  and  temporal  life  of 
man.    We  know  that  in  the  one  realm  which  eternally 
\  matters  unselfishness  is  regnant,  love  is  triumphant, 
and  therefore  we  are  sure  that  the  thing  which  is 
structural  in  the  basal  life  of  the  universe  must  make 
\  itself  felt  more  and  more  potently  in  the  very  world 
i  where  we  live.     When  people  give  back  deception  for 
friendliness,  and  betrayal  for  love,  it  is  a  sad  and 
bitter  experience,  but  it  can  never  be  a  completely 
Yiisheartening  experience,  for  all  the  while  we  know 
/that  the  very  structure  of  the  universe  is  on  the  side 
i  of  the  things  to  which  they  have  been  false. 
V    We  can  afford  to  be  patient.     We  can  afford  to 
I wait.     Time  may  seem  to  be  against  us.     Eternity  is 
on  our  side.     In  other  words,  we  do  not  base  our 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  207 

optimism  upon  a  superficial  confidence  in  human  i 
nature.    We  base  our  confidence  upon  the  very  essen-  \ 
tial  quality  of  the  life  of  God.     We  know  that  people 
have  been  false.     We  know  that  in  an  environment 
offering  the  best  sort  of  opportunity  and  the  noblest 
stimulus  some  people  will  be  false.    We  are  not  sur- 
prised when  employers  betray  workers  and  workers 
betray    employers.    We    are    not    surprised    when 
Peace  Conferences  are  soiled  by  emerging  national  I 
and  individual  selfishnesses.     All  these  things  we  \ 
understand.    All  these  things  we  expect.    And  from   \ 
the  spectacle  we  look  out  to  that  eternal  life  of  God 
which  is  perpetually  based  upon  unselfish  love.    Here  ; 
we  find  something  solid  and  dependable.     And  in   _ 
every  bit  of  human  unselfishness,  in  every  human 
striving  after  brotherhood,  in  every  human  move- 
ment for  a  more  orderly  world,  we  see  the  expression  - 
on  the  field  of  this  life  of  that  which  is  the  deepest    - 
verity  in  the  life  of  all  things.     We  believe,  in  spite 
of  sad  and  heart-breaking  experiences,  in  the  triumph 
of   brotherhood   here,    because   we   know   that    the 
brotherhood  which  reigns  over  the  whole  structure 
of  things  must  at  last  come  to  reign  in  the  life  of 
man. 

To  be  sure,  we  cannot  hope  to  escape  entirely  from 
the  hosts  of  the  metaphysicians.  And  we  have  no 
desire  to  escape  from  the  necessity  of  looking  frankly 
at  the  metaphysical  relationships  of  the  position  we 
have  been  investigating.  For  practical  purposes  as 
well  as  for  speculative  purposes  a  man  needs  a  theory  ) 
of  reality.  And  from  the  standpoint  of  its  pro- 
ductiveness we  can  examine  a  particular  theory  of 


208  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

reality  without  going  beyond  the  bounds  which  we 
have  set  for  this  course  of  lectures.  When  we  ap- 
proach the  matter  of  a  careful  statement  regarding 
the  Trinity  in  the  light  of  its  ontological  relations 
we  need  to  keep  one  or  two  matters  in  mind.  The 
first  is  that  we  have  not  the  slightest  intention  of 
attempting  to  give  a  formula  for  the  life  of  God  con- 
ceived of  as  triune.  The  possessor  of  such  a  formula, 
if  such  a  formula  there  be,  by  very  means  of  its 
possession  would  have  already  transcended  the 
limitations  of  this  finite  life.  The  man  who  at- 
tempted such  a  feat  would  reveal  at  once  his  complete 
incapacity  to  apprehend  the  true  nature  of  the 
problem.  The  real  problem  is  not  to  explain  the 
inner  life  of  God.  It  is  to  see  what  light  a  particular 
conception  of  the  inner  life  of  God  will  throw  upon 
all  other  problems.  The  question  we  are  facing  is 
not  that  of  explaining  the  Trinity.  It  is  the  matter 
of  seeing  whether  the  Trinity  is  a  conception  which 
can  be  used  to  explain  everything  else.    In  other 

Cords,  we  must  think  of  the  view  of  God  as  triune  as 
e  would  think  of  a  key. 

Now  the  practical  question  about  a  key  is  as  to 
whether  it  will  fit  the  lock,  and  whether  by  means  of 
it  you  can  turn  the  lock  and  open  the  door.  Life  is 
k  lock.  The  Trinity  is  offered  as  a  key.  Does  it 
(fit  the  lock?  Will  it  open  the  door?  When  a  man 
asks  any  other  question  about  a  key  he  simply  reveals 
the  fact  that  he  has  not  understood  the  meaning  of 
the  problem  or  the  significance  of  the  key.  To  be 
sure  a  man  might  ask  about  the  keyness  of  a  key, 
about  its  significance  quite  apart  from  any  lock.     If 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  209 

he  did  this  he  would  be  asking  a  purely  verbal  ques- 
tion as  far  as  the  functioning  of  the  key,  as  a  key,  is 
concerned.  It  is  conceivable  that  you  might  have  a 
key  which  could  also  be  used  as  a  whistle.  But  that 
would  not  have  anything  to  do  with  your  understand- 
ing of  its  meaning  as  a  key.  There  may  be  all  sorts 
of  transcendent  relations  of  the  divine  life.  But  we 
are  not  concerned  with  them  now.  We  are  simply 
concerned  to  find  what  thought  of  the  life  of  God  will 
best  relate  itself  to  all  the  experience  of  existence 
and  life.  The  thought  of  God  into  which  all  the 
facts  of  life  and  experience  will  most  completely  fit  is 
the  one  to  which  we  are  committed  as  far  as  our 
thought  in  this  world  is  concerned.  And  that  is  the 
only  thought  with  which  we  can  have  significant  con- 
nection at  this  time. 

The  other  thing  which  we  must  keep  in  mind  as 
we  approach  a  careful  statement  about  the  Trinity 
is  that  it  is  possible  to  think  a  conception  when  you  I 
cannot  make  a  picture  of  it.     There  are  two  kinds  of  / 
thinking  which  are  characteristic   of  us  all.     One 
has  to  do  with  that  which  goes  on  below  our  eye- 
brows.    The  other  has  to  do  with  what  goes  on  above 
our  eyebrows.     In  the  one  case  we  make  pictures.  1 
In  the  other  we  reach  conceptions  which  it  is  not  pos-  ] 
sible  to  visualize.     A  good  many  people  do  not  do 
much  thinking  which  is  above  their  eyebrows.    Prac-  1 
tically  all  of  their  thinking  consists  of  making  mental 
pictures.     When  they  say  that  they  understand  a 
thing  they  mean  that  they  can  make  a  picture  of  it  in 
their  minds.     When  they  say  that  they  cannot  un- 
derstand a  thing  they  mean  that  they  are  unable  to 


2IO  THE   PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

make  a  picture  of  it.  Now  we  want  to  say  with  the 
utmost  frankness  that  we  have  not  the  slightest  in- 
tention of  trying  to  visualize  the  Trinity.  We  have 
not  the  most  momentary  thought  that  it  is  possible 
to  make  a  mental  picture  of  the  Triune  life  of  God. 
But  while  you  cannot  make  a  picture  of  the  Trinity 
you  can  think  clearly  what  is  involved  in  the  con- 
ception of  the  Trinity.  And  if  we  can  understand 
from  the  start  that  we  are  seeking  a  clear  and  defi- 
nite conception  and  not  a  picture  which  would  re- 
duce the  life  of  God  to  the  dimensions  of  sense  we 
shall  be  saved  from  a  good  deal  of  confusion  and 
from  a  good  deal  of  misapprehension, 
j  From  this  standpoint  then  what  is  involved  in  the 
1  thought  of  God  as  Triune  ?  Perhaps  we  may  ex- 
'  press  it  in  this  way:  The  Christian  thought  of  the 
Trinity  involves  the  conception  of  one  perfect  and 
eternal  divine  life  in  which  there  are  included  three 
centers  of  consciousness  and  of^will,  all  bound  to- 
gether in  such  a  fashion  that  the  existence  of  one 
involves  the  existence  of  the  other  two,  and  all  united 
in  the  most  perfect  oneness  of  thought  and  feeling 
and  decision.  In  other  words,  you  have  a  divine  life 
with  ontological  unity  in  the  sense  that  one  person 
of  the  Trinity  only  exists  in  and  through  the  ex- 
istence of  the  other  two.  And  you  have  ethical  unity 
in  the  sense  that  they  always  perfectly  agree  and,  as 
some  one  has  wisely  said,  the  will  of  God  is  always 
one  will  twice  reinforced.  Here  then  you  have  a 
fundamental  unity  of  life  and  intention  and  volition. 
You  also  have  all  the  richness  and  fullness  of  life 
which  comes  from  three  centers  of  conscious  percep- 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  211 

tion  and  will.  Now  put  in  this  fashion  all  of  this  is 
just  about  as  interesting  and  compelling  as  a  key 
without  any  suggestion  as  to  the  lock  which  it  is  to 
fit,  and  to  turn,  and  to  open.  At  once  we  must  ask 
what  would  be  the  actual  value  of  such  a  conception  ¥ 
What  would  it  do  for  us  ?  In  what  way  would  it  be 
productive?  What  would  be  its  pragmatic  signifi- 
cance f 

In  replying  to  these  questions  we  may  say :  First, 
such  a  conception  does  justice  to  the  unity  of  the 
world  and  that  vast  harmonious  system  of  things 
which  has  become  familiar  to  us  all  through  manifold 
studies  in  the  physical  sciences.  There  must  be  one 
will  and  one  purpose  and  one  plan  in  the  universe 
which  we  know  through  ear  and  eye  and  the  sense 
of  touch,  and  all  the  long  observations  and  classifica- 
tions of  the  workers  in  the  realm  of  physical  science. 
Now  such  oneness  of  fundamental  life  as  we  have 
described,  and  such  complete  oneness  of  thought  and 
of  purpose  and  of  activity  as  we  have  considered, 
absolutely  corresponds  to  the  oneness  of  the  vast  and! 
far-reaching  physical  universe  concerning  which 
recent  centuries  have  taught  us  so  much. 

But  it  is  not  only  true  that  a  certain  unity  in  the 
fundamental  reality  is  required  by  the  uniformity 
of  nature  as  we  know  it,  we  must  at  once  add  that  / 
this  same  thing  is  necessary  as  a  basis  for  the  in-  j 
tellectual  and  the  moral  life   of  the  world.     The 
basis  of  rationality  must  be  in  one  type  of  mental  1 
life.    If  you  can  have  types  of  mind  in  the  world 
which  in  fundamental  and  structural  ways  differ  from 
each  other  it  is  idle  to  talk  about  truth.    And  if  you 


212  THE  PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

have  contradiction  of  purpose  and  will  in  the  life  of 
God  it  is  idle  to  talk  about  any  moral  sanctions. 
There  must  be  oneness  of  mental  type  and  oneness  of 
moral  consciousness  and  moral  purpose  in  the  life  of 
God  if  rationality  and  ethics  have  any  dependable 
meaning.  And  these  necessities  are  completely  an- 
swered to  in  that  view  of  the  life  of  God  which  we 
have  described. 

But  there  is  more  of  life  than  we  have  touched 
when  we  have  spoken  in  the  terms  of  the  basis  for  the 
unity  of  the  world  order  and  of  morality  and  of 
rationality.  As  we  have  already  seen  there  is  a 
fullness  and  variety  which  belongs  to  life,  and  we 
have  a  deep  intuition  that  somehow  the  basis  for  this 
must  be  gotten  into  the  life  of  God.  The  Greek 
polytheism  represents  this  intuition  gone  mad.  It 
proves  too  much.  It  gives  such  variety  and  diversity 
that  there  is  no  unity,  there  is  nothing  stable  or 
dependable.  Such  a  view  of  divine  beings  was 
sure  to  go  down  before  the  sense  of  the  physical 
and  moral  and  intellectual  unity  of  the  world.  On 
the  other  hand  a  bare  and  rigid  monotheism  may  1 
seem  beset  by  difficulties  of  just  the  opposite  kind.! 
It  makes  unity  such  an  attenuated  and  barren  thing/ 
that  it  leaves  the  world  cold  and  hard.  It  simpl^1 
fails  to  correspond  to  the  wonderful  richness  and 
variety  which  belong  to  the  world  and  life  in  the 
terms  of  our  actual  experience.  Now  as  the  very 
nature  of  the  thought  of  God  involves  an  endeavour 
by  means  of  it  to  do  justice  to  all  the  elements  of 
experience  we  may  surely  say  that  a  hard  and 
mechanical  monotheism  needs  to  be  reinforced  and 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  213 

enriched.  It  needs  in  fact  to  become  such  a  living 
and  glowing  kind  of  monotheism  as  is  made  possible 
by  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 

We  have  already  seen  how  deep  is  the  practical 
necessity  that  the  social  passion  and  the  great  and 
pervasive  dream  of  human  brotherhood  shall  find  a 
secure  basis  in  the  very  nature  of  God.  Now  let  us 
see  in  a  little  more  detail  the  fashion  in  which  the 
view  of  the  social  life  of  God  which  we  have  been 
discussing  does  this  very  thing.  We  can  see  at 
once  that  the  divine  life  which  we  have  described 
involves  in  its  very  nature  an  eternal  brntherliofld  in 
the  life  of  the  Deity.  That  in  some  deep  sense  the 
Father  is  fundamental  to  the  life  of  the  infinite 
divine  organism  we  may  readily  admit.  It  must  be 
added  at  once,  that  that  whole  organic  life  is  possible 
only  as  three  centers  of  personal  consciousness  per- 
petually exist.  This  means  that  the  very  life  of  God 
is  an  eternal  unselfishness.  The  Father  exists  in  and 
through  the  Son.  The  Son  exists  in  and  through 
the  Father.  And  the  Holy  Spirit  has  the  same  rela- 
tion to  the  other  two.  Here  you  have  a  social  organ- 
ism. Here  you  have  an  eternal  brotherhood.  Here 
you  have  all  that  life  in  perfect  self-giving  which  is 
the  final  social  ideal  perfectly  existing  in  the  life  of 
God.  When  we  remember  that  the  perpetual  agree- 
ment in  purpose,  the  perpetual  harmony  of  love,  is 
a  matter  of  eternal  loyalty  and  eternal  choice,  we 
begin  to  see  how  profoundly  God  is  everything  which 
He  asks  us  to  become. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  man 
who  faced  the  real  outcome  of  denying  the  Trinity 


214  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

could  conserve  the  sanctions  of  Christian  ethics. 
For  if  you  think  of  God  as  an  eternal  lonely  person 
existing  in  the  splendid  isolation  of  His  own  perfec- 
tions, loving  Himself  forever,  and  yet  perpetually 
asking  men  to  forget  themselves  and  to  love  each 
other,  God  is  all  the  while  asking  men  to  do  what  He 
has  never  done,  and  He  is  making  the  supreme  virtue 
of  human  life  to  consist  in  being  as  completely  as 
possible  unlike  Him.  He  is  making  that  which  is 
good  in  Him  bad  in  men.  And  He  is  making  what  is 
intolerable  in  men  the  very  central  matter  in  His 
own  life.  The  truth  is  that  only  an  eternally  un- 
selfish God  can  be  the  basis  for  Christian  ethics. 
And  the  view  of  the  social  life  of  God  which  we  have 
outlined  is  the  only  one  under  the  terms  of  which 
it  is  possible  to  think  of  an  eternally  unselfish  God. 
To  press  the  matter  a  little  farther  it  is  not  clear  in 
what  fashion  we  can  give  reality  to  the  Biblical  con- 
ception that  God  is  love  unless  we  have  some  such 
view  of  God's  social  life  as  that  which  we  are  fol- 
lowing to  some  of  its  implications.  Not  to  press  the 
metaphysical  aspects  of  the  problem  it  is  at  least 
clear  that  a  God  with  a  rich  and  vivid  social  life  such 
as  that  which  the  Christian  conception  of  the  Trinity 
makes  possible  can  most  simply  and  easily  and 
naturally  be  thought  of  as  a  God  of  love. 

What  are  some  of  the  aspects  of  human  life  and 
experience  which  find  themselves  deeply  explained 
and  solidly  placed  in  the  very  structure  of  the 
universe  as  we  think  of  the  social  life  of  God  ? 

Many  treatises  have  been  written  about  friendship.  • 
And  the  words  of  interpretation  which  come  down 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  215 

from  dim  far-off  ages  as  well  as  those  written  in  our  v 
time  come  from  hearts  glowing  with  a  sense  of  the 
rare  and  noble  fragrance  which  is  shed  upon  human 
life  by  the  experience  of  noble  devotion  from  friend 
to  friend.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  life  has 
been  literally  transformed  for  many  a  man  through 
his  experience  of  friendship.  And  the  contemporary 
expression  of  friendship  on  the  battle-fields  of 
Europe  where  men  who  were  not  at  all  articulate 
and  did  not  have  bright  words  to  tell  the  story  of 
their  devotion  to  their  comrades  but  expressed  their  ^ 
deep  and  mastering  friendships  in  immortal  deeds  j 
of  self-forgetful  daring  is  one  of  the  most  notable 
aspects  of  the  war  when  we  approach  it  from  the  side 
of  its  deeper  meaning  and  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
forces  which  it  released.  This  fine  and  rare  and 
beautiful  flower  has  bloomed  in  every  land.  It  has 
enriched  the  lives  of  all  peoples.  What  is  the  source 
of  it  ?  Where  does  it  really  come  from  ?  What  basis 
does  it  have  in  the  system  of  things?  When  we  are 
able  to  reply  that  friendship  is  fundamental  in  the 
life  of  God  the  whole  experience  is  lifted  into  a 
higher  meaning.  When  we  know  that  God  has  al- 
ways been  a  friend,  and  that  the  devotion  of  person  \ 
for  person  which  is  the  basis  of  friendship  is  funda-  j 
mental  in  the  divine  life,  we  come  to  realize  that  the 
universe  itself  is  on  the  side  of  unselfish  friendship. 
We  see  that  the  world  was  built  for  friends. 

The  deeper  experiences  of  love  are  the  most  amaz- 
ing and  transforming  and  productive  experiences  of 
human  life.  The  love  which  makes  a  human  home, 
the  flame  of  .a  man's  devotion  to  a  woman,  and  a   I 


2l6  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

woman's  devotion  to  a  man,  the  unfathomable 
love  of  a  mother,  and  the  gripping  devotion  of  a 
father,  the  whole  interplay  of  joyously  loyal  affection 
in  a  family  where  each  member  pours  out  of  a  full 
heart  an  abundant  gift  of  love,  and  each  receives  in 
return  the  richness  of  an  abounding  devotion — this 
rich  and  diversified  light  and  heat  of  the  home 
fires  when  they  are  kept  nobly  and  brightly  burning, 
is  a  thing  before  which  we  stand  in  solemn  wonder, 
in  deep  and  amazed  awe.  If  goodness  is  kept  alive 
in  the  world,  if  the  pure  and  lofty  things  are  win- 
ning a  place  in  human  life,  how  deep  an  influence  for 
all  these  things  goes  forth  from  the  home  of  clean 
and  triumphant  love.  And  once  again  we  ask  the 
question:  Where  does  it  come  from?  What  is  its 
source  ?  Does  it  have  a  sure  and  sound  basis  in  the 
structure  of  things  %  And  quick  and  sure  comes  back 
the  reply :  All  this  is  an  expression  in  human  life  of 
what  is  eternally  fundamental  in  the  divine  life. 
The  home  love  is  an  eternal  thing  in  the  life  and  in 
the  experience  of  God.  Every  human  home  of  real 
and  abiding  affection  is  a  little  hint  in  time  of  the 
perpetual  home  life  of  God  in  the  mutual  love  of  the 
Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit.  The 
sacredness  of  a  home  and  all  the  far-flung  influences 
of  its  affection  sound  in  some  finite  way  the  note 
which  is  infinite  in  the  life  of  God.  So  it  comes  to 
pass  that  the  man  who  sins  against  the  home  is 
sinning  against  the  fundamental  life  of  the  universe. 
The  man  who  plays  with  love  is  playing  with  the  most 
central  and  mastering  reality  in  the  life  of  the 
world. 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  21 7 

The  devotion  a  man  comes  to  feel  for  the  Church 
of  God  in  the  world,  his  desire  that  it  shall  be  a 
true  and  unselfish  brotherhood  of  friendly  men,  his 
desire  that  it  shall  have  the  oneness  of  a  common 
purpose,  and  the  richness  of  a  common  affection,  is 
not  merely  a  passing  emotion.  As  we  have  already 
seen  in  the  great  prayer  of  Jesus  the  Master  Himself 
based  His  ideal  for  the  brotherhood  of  the  Church, 
His  conception  of  its  unity  and  love,  upon  the  already 
existing  oneness,  the  already  existing  perfection  in 
united  life  of  the  Godhead.  The  Church  is  perpetu- 
ally to  be  seeking  with  a  passion  beyond  the  power 
of  words  to  tell  to  represent  in  time  that  which  God 
perfectly  realizes  in  eternity. 

The  devotion  of  men  to  their  community,  to  their 
commonwealth  and  to  their  state,  is  one  of  the  fine 
and  productive  things  about  human  life.  A  man  is 
ready  to  pay  a  real  price  for  the  advancement  of  his 
community,  he  has  a  glowing  and  practical  enthu- 
siasm for  the  welfare  of  his  commonwealth.  And 
how  astonishingly  we  have  learned  the  fashion  in 
which  millions  of  young  men  in  our  own  day  have 
been  ready  to  lay  down  their  lives  for  the  good  of 
their  country.  The  ability  of  a  man  to  lose  his 
consciousness  of  self  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
challenge  of  the  larger  group  and  his  privilege  of 
loyalty  to  it,  show  us  human  nature  in  an  aspect 
which  is  full  of  promise.  And  the  basis  of  this 
perpetually  outcropping  tendency  in  man  to  find 
a  cause  larger  than  himself,  to  find  a  loyalty  to 
something  greater  than  his  own  personal  life,  is  in 
the  life  of  the  universe  itself  the  deepest  thing.    For 


218  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

the  life  of  God  is  a  perpetual  history  of  personality 
realizing  itself  through  self-giving  loyalty  to  other 
/personality.  The  social  ideal  of  the  community,  the 
social  ideal  of  the  commonwealth,  and  the  social 
ideal  of  the  nation  have  their  basis  in  the  life  of 
God. 

A  new  ideal  and  a  new  hope  in  respect  of  interna- 
tional relationships  has  come  to  the  world  in  our 
time.  The  League  of  Nations  has  as  its  foundation 
the  thought  that  the  world  is  one  world  with  common 
interests  and  that  its  life  ought  to  be  organized  for 
the  common  good.  The  nations  are  not  to  be  enemies 
constantly  watching  each  other  with  suspicious  eyes 
and  perpetually  preparing  for  inevitable  and  deadly 
struggle.     They  are  to  be  friends  about  a  common 

Iask  and  needing  and  securing  each  others'  coopera- 
ion  for  the  building  into  stable  form  of  the  fabric  of 
he  life  of  the  world.  It  is  a  splendidly  noble  ideal. 
Our  hearts  thrill  at  the  thought  of  it.  But  what  is 
the  basis  of  this  sort  of  view  of  life  ?  What  support 
does  it  have  in  the  very  structure  of  things?  Once 
again  we  must  answer  that  if  the  life  of  God  is 
unity  in  diversity,  if  the  life  of  God  is  the  eternally 
cooperative  action  of  mutually  loving  persons  in  the 
unity  of  one  life  and  one  purpose,  then  the  thought 
of  life  as  one  in  spite  of  all  its  diversity  is  inevitable 
to  men  who  come  to  understand  the  realities  of 
existence.  If  God  Himself  represents  an  eternally 
unselfish  social  life,  then  the  fundamental  ideal  of 
the  League  of  Nations  has  a  secure  place  in  the  life 
of  the  Deity.    It  is  structural  in  the  universe. 

The  Christian  Church  moves  forward  with  one 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  219 

great  purpose  in  the  world.  It  would  conquer  the 
world  for  Jesus  Christ.  It  would  master  the  world 
by  the  principles  of  His  unselfish  brotherhood.  It 
would  teach  all  men.  It  would  make  disciples  of  all 
nations.  It  would  secure  the  reign  of  Christ  and  all 
that  organic  life  in  loving  brotherhood  for  which 
He  stands.  What,  for  a  last  time  we  ask,  is  the 
basis  for  this  sort  of  dream  of  world-wide  brother- 
hood ?  What  is  the  last  and  ultimate  foundation  of 
the  missionary  ideal?  What  is  the  justification  of 
the  Christian  program  for  the  whole  world?  And 
the  answer  is  that  the  missionary  hope  is  based  upon 
the  most  fundamental  experiences  of  the  divine  life. 
Does  the  world-wide  messenger  of  the  Gospel  summon 
men  to  unselfishness?  He  does  it  in  the  name  of  a 
God  whose  perpetual  life  is  an  expression  of  un- 
selfish love.  Does  He  summon  nations  to  a  life  of, 
organic  brotherhood?  He  does  it  in  the  name  of  a 
Deity  who  realizes  in  eternity  all  that  He  asks  of 
men  in  time.  The  life  of  God  is  the  pattern  for  the 
life  of  the  world.  And  so  the  missionary  program 
has  its  secure  authentication  in  the  very  structure  of 
the  divine  life. 

From  all  this  we  see  that  if  the  deepest  and  richest 
and  most  productive  and  hopeful  and  outreaching 
experiences  of  men  in  all  their  most  vital  relation- 
ships are  not  to  be  entirely  foreign  to  the  life  and 
experience  of  the  Deity  we  must  believe  in  the  social 
life  of  God.  And  so  believing  we  find  that  God 
touches  us  at  every  movement  of  life.  He  is  no 
longer  the  distant  refuge  of  formal  thought.  He  is 
the  most  real  influence  in  our  lives.     He  draws  near 


220  THE   PRODUCTIVE   BELIEFS 

to  us  in  the  splendour  of  a  perfect  experience  of  all 
that  we  long  for  and  hope  to  be. 

"The  end  of  the  exploration  is  the  beginning  of 
the  enterprise, ' '  said  a  great,  modern,  pioneer  mis- 
sionary. It  is  always  true  that  a  journey  of  mental 
exploration  must  be  followed  by  the  enterprise  of 
life  itself,  if  the  exploring  is  in  the  profoundest 
[sense  productive.  The  test  to  which  we  must  submit 
these  studies  in  interpretation  is  the  test  of  life. 
Does  the  view  which  we  have  advocated  have  the 
vigour  and  the  power  of  practical  and  permanent  in- 
spiration in  it?  Will  the  men  and  women  under 
the  actual  burdens  of  our  tense  and  driven  modern 
world  find  that  such  views  of  God  and  man  and  the 
tragedy  of  evil  and  the  presence  of  God  in  human 
life  and  the  wealth  of  God 's  own  experience  of  social 
life  give  them  a  lift  and  a  potent  pressure  toward 
lofty  living,  a  joy  and  a  satisfaction  in  life  which 
they  did  not  know  before?  Is  there  ethical  and 
spiritual  power  in  the  achievement  of  Christ  on  the 
Cross  as  we  have  seen  that  achievement  unfold  which 
will  cut  its  way  into  the  center  of  human  life  in 
renewing  and  transforming  strength?  Under  the 
hot  skies  and  in  the  winter's  cold,  with  the  actual 
pressures  of  life  all  about  us  and  upon  us,  fighting 
our  way  day  by  day  we  must  find  the  answer  to  these 
questions  in  actual  experience. 

There  are  some  matters,  however,  which  it  seems 
ought  to  be  fairly  clear.  One  is  that  only  a  God 
who  can  speak  from  experience  can  speak  to  experi- 
ence. A  distant  and  beatific  being  who  at  no  point 
of  nature  or  of  life  touches  anything  which  in  any 


THE   SOCIAL  LIFE   OF  GOD  221 

fashion  parallels  the  burning  intensity  of  our  experi- 
ence of  life  can  never  speak  the  mastering  word  to 
us.  On  the  other  hand  a  God  whose  own  life  is  rich 
in  social  meaning,  a  God  whose  nature  is  perfect  love 
and  white  and  naming  righteousness,  a  God  whose 
experience  is  full  of  audacious  and  daring  adventure, 
a  God  who  presses  close  to  every  life  in  His  imma- 
nent activity,  and  came  under  the  full  burden  of  life 
in  an  actual  human  experience  in  the  Incarnation,  a 
God  who  went  the  whole  terrible  suffering  length  of 
Calvary  that  men  might  be  rescued  and  a  new  life 
be  made  possible  for  the  world,  such  a  God  speaks  to 
us  in  a  language  we  can  understand  and  in  a  voice 
which  masters  our  very  hearts.  We  can  pray  to 
such  a  God  for  He  knows  our  language  and  He  knows 
our  life.  We  can  give  ourselves  to  such  a  God  for 
He  calls  to  us  from  His  own  way  of  daring  adventure 
and  He  speaks  to  us  from  His  own  hill  of  pain.  He 
finds  us  in  the  midst  of  our  struggles.  He  bends  to 
meet  us  and  feels  the  weight  of  our  sins.  He  is  one 
with  us  in  order  that  we  may  be  one  with  Him. 
Every  word  He  speaks  comes  to  us  dripping  with 
vitality.  Through  contact  with  such  a  Deity  relig- 
ion becomes  the  most  resilient  and  vital  thing  in  all 
the  world. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  Bible  becomes  that 
literature  which  gives  us  the  vivid  and  mastering  \ 
experiences  through  which_God  is  made  real  toymen,  j 
It  is  the  supreme  expression  of  meiTs  experience  in 
relation  to  God.  And  in  it  God  becomes  articulate, 
speaking  forth? in  the  warm  and  powerful  voice  of  life 
itself.    All  of  the  Bible  makes  its  contribution  to 


222  THE  PRODUCTIVE  BELIEFS 

that  wonderful  achievement  whereby  God  ^jyes  Him- 
self into  the  life  of  men.  The  Bible  speaks  from  a 
wealth  of  varied  experiences.  And  all  of  its  voices, 
all  of  its  manifold  books  are  to  be  interpreted  by  ex- 
perience. Formal  logic  may  easily  go  astray.  But  life 
calling  to  life,  and  life  answering  to  life  will  not  lose 
the  way.  God  is  ready  to  speak  to  the  mind.  He  is 
ready  to  speak  to  the  conscience.  He  is  ready  to 
speak  to  the  will.  He  is  ready  to  speak  to  that 
strange  and  evasive  aspect  of  our  nature  which  we 
call  the  emotional  life.  But  most  of  all  God  is  ready 
to  speak  to  all  of  our  life  together  in  the  terms  of 
living  experience.  All  there  is  of  moral  and  spiritual 
meaning  in  the  life  of  God  pouring  itself  forth  into 
the  life  of  men  on  the  very  field  of  history — that  is 
Christianity. 

This  approach  to  religion  and  to  the  truths  of 
religion  saves  us  from  many  things,  and  it  brings  to 
us  the  very  undiluted  riches  of  the  religious  life. 
We  are  not  entangled  in  abstruse  puzzles  of  formal 
logic.  We  come  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  matter 
and  find  the  living  God  in  actual  contact  with  the 
life  of  man.  All  that  is  incidental  is  brushed  aside. 
We  come  at  once  into  the  presence  of  the  bush  which 
is  burning  but  not  consumed.  The  productive  beliefs 
we  find  are  those  which  speak  from  experience  and 
which  in  turn  create  further  and  fuller  and  more 
mastering  experience  in  the  world. 

To  be  sure  there  is  no  end  of  work  left  for  the 

(philosophic  mind.     But   this  has   to   do   with   the 

formulating  and  the  interpreting  of  that  which  has 

already  been  completely  authenticated  on  the  field  of 


THE  SOCIAL  LIFE  OF  GOD  223 

actual  experience.  Logic  can  be  of  rare  service  in 
the  matter  of  classifying  that  which  has  become  the 
very  living  inspiration  of  our  life.  But  the  logical 
forms  in  which  the  great  truths  are  conveyed  must 
always  submit  to  the  mastery  of  the  truths  they 
carry.  Our  systems  must  perpetually  be  the  serv- 
ants of  the  truths  they  bear  to  the  world. 

Life  itself  then  speaks  the  first  word.  Life  itself 
speaks  the  last  word  and  it  is  because  He  is  perpetu- 
lly  and  triumphantly  alive  that  God  speaks  the  word 
which  is  both  first  and  last. 

It  is  such  a  God  who  looks  upon  us  and  upon 
whom  we  look  as  we  see  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. 
It  is  such  a  God  whom  we  hear  as  we  listen  to  His 
speech.  It  is  such  a  God  who  is  made  marvellously 
articulate  in  His  life.  It  is  such  a  God  whose  whole 
ethical  and  spiritual  life  is  expressed  in  triumphant 
suffering  love  upon  the  Cross.  It  is  such  a  God  who 
stands  triumphant  among  the  Easter  lilies.  It  is 
such  a  God  who  meets  us  every  day  in  all  the  strange 
bewilderment  of  life  with  the  vitalizing  touch  which 
makes  all  things  new.  It  is  such  a  God  who  spoke  to 
men  in  the  battle-fields  of  war  and  will  speak  to  them 
in  the  subtler  battle-fields  of  peace.  The  adventur- 
ous God  has  come  to  us  in  Jesus  Christ  and  following 
Him  we  trace  the  far  and  wonderful  ways  where  we 
apprehend  the  meaning  of  God  for  our  lives  and  for 
the  life  of  all  the  world.  Following  Him  we  go 
forth  to  remake  the  world  after  the  fashion  of  the 
will  of  God. 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


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